HONG KONG — If not for his “bad” family background, Mo Shaoping might be a senior military officer now. Instead, he has become one of China’s leading human rights lawyers, representing prominent political dissidents, journalists and even practitioners of the banned Falun Gong sect.
他的客户包括了最近在调查川震校舍倒塌学生死亡名单事件中被拘而遭判刑三年的黄琦，纽约时报的调查员，因为“泄露国家机密罪”被拘的赵炎；还有之前三次入狱，最近因参与08宪章而被控“煽动颠覆国家政权”的刘晓波
His clients have included Huang Qi, who recently was sentenced to three years in prison after demanding an investigation of school collapses in last year’s Sichuan earthquake; Zhao Yan, a researcher for The New York Times who was accused of revealing state secrets; and Liu Xiaobo, who was jailed three times before his current detention, charged with “inciting subversion” for his work on the Charter 08 democracy manifesto.
在周三开始的审判时，刘先生将由莫律师事务所的另外一名律师出面代表。而莫律师本人被禁止直接代表刘晓波，因为他本人也签署了要求政改和法律变革的08宪章。
At the trial, which started Wednesday, Mr. Liu will be represented by other lawyers from Mr. Mo’s firm. Mr. Mo has been barred from representing Mr. Liu directly, because he also signed Charter 08, which calls for political reforms and the rule of law.
“我 无发认同的他的有罪指控，”莫律师说到刘晓波。“事情可以商榷，但是你们不能直接把人往监狱里送。”操作政治敏感度高的案件对中国的律师通常是无益的，但 是莫律师已经把这个当成了这十年来的目标。他从1995年开始为异见人士辩护，当时老牌的民主宣传者刘念春的妻子根本无法找到律师为她的丈夫辩护。“我的 立场就是，无论这人犯了天大的罪，他也有权利寻求一个律师的帮助。这是最基本的人权！”51岁的莫律师在香港的访谈中说，她女儿在那里刚刚大学毕业。
“I don’t agree that he should be convicted,” Mr. Mo said of Mr. Liu. “These things can be debated over, but you can’t just send people to prison.”
Taking on politically sensitive cases can be hazardous for Chinese lawyers, but Mr. Mo has made this his mission for more than a decade. He began defending dissidents in 1995, when the wife of Liu Nianchun, a veteran democracy advocate, could not find any other lawyer to defend her husband.
“My position is that whatever crime someone has committed, he should always have the right to a lawyer. That is one of the most basic human rights,” Mr. Mo, 51, said in an interview in Hong Kong, where he was attending his daughter’s university graduation.
“我相信是非应留待后人说。”
“I believe it is for posterity to judge who is right or wrong.”
也许是因为他的客户的不幸，莫律师在职业生涯的初期，常常有挫败感。
Perhaps fortunately for his clients, Mr. Mo was thwarted in his original career ambitions.
1976年，他在18岁时参军。当时文革刚刚结束。但是当一年后他试图进入一所军事院校学习时，他被告知因为他“复杂的家庭背景”而不符合资格。
He joined the army at the age of 18 in 1976, just as the Cultural Revolution ended. But when he tried to enter a military college a year later, he was told he did not qualify because of his “complex family background.”
他 后来明白了那是什么意思。在1949年社会主义吞没大陆之前，他祖父曾经是一名地主还是国民党政府下的国家立法机构代表，而他的外祖父是拥有芝加哥大学博 士学位的宗教和哲学教授。两人都在文革中丧生，一个被红卫兵凌虐至死，一个则自缢。北京出生的莫律师压根没有见过他的两位生活在南方的祖辈，他甚至不知道 他们的生死或者境况。
He later learned what that meant. His paternal grandfather had been a landlord and a delegate to the national legislature under the Kuomintang government, before the Communists took power in 1949. His maternal grandfather had been a professor of philosophy and religion, with a doctorate from the University of Chicago. Both men had died during the Cultural Revolution, one tortured by Red Guards, the other driven to suicide. Mr. Mo, born in Beijing, had never met either grandfather, both of whom had lived in southern China; he had not even known of their deaths, or the circumstances.
他的父母-同样都是医生，在文革时跟其他一些知识分子被送去了郊外的实验室，因为当时的政治气候，也从未和莫律师谈起过他祖辈的不合时宜的“资本主义”背景。
Because of the political climate of the time, his parents — both doctors who were sent to labor in the countryside along with other intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution — had never discussed his grandfathers’ undesirably “bourgeois” backgrounds with him.
当被问到他的祖辈的遭遇是否让他对那些遭受政治迫害的人有一种感同身受的感觉，这位戴着眼镜，脾气温和的律师笑道：“我也许天生就有这种感觉吧。”
Asked whether his grandfathers’ sufferings had given him a sense of solidarity with those who face political persecution, the mild-mannered, bespectacled lawyer laughed. “I suppose it might be in my genes,” he said.
当他在80年离开军队后，他在北京市检察院开始工作，之后他在北京政法学院和社科院学习法律。
After he left the army in 1980, he was assigned to work at the Beijing Municipal Procuratorate and later studied law at the Beijing College of Politics and Law and the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
总部设在纽约的人权观察组织表彰了莫律师，因为他比其他中国的律师处理了更多的广泛关注的人权方面的案子，他也指出，这些案子通常是风险最大，耗时最多，而收益微乎其微的。
While the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch praises Mr. Mo as having handled more high-profile human rights cases than any other lawyer in China, he notes that these are also the riskiest and most time-consuming cases and bring the least monetary reward.
他现在也没有赢下一宗官司，他的委托人都因为促进民主或者挑战共产党的专政而被关押或者流放。
And he has yet to win one. His clients all have been jailed or exiled for promoting democracy or daring to challenge the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
“赢下来几乎不可能，”他说。“最佳的结果只能是希望一个妥协。”
“It’s impossible to win these cases,” he said. “The best you can hope for is a compromise.”
“妥协”意味着被辩护人会得到暂缓判决或者被允许流放，就像被禁的中国民主党创建者徐文立。
“Compromise” means the defendant might be given a suspended sentence or be permitted to go into exile, as was Xu Wenli, a founder of the banned China Democracy Party.
去打不可能赢下的仗会让人很气馁。但是莫律师坚持认为自己的努力会有成效。“如果你不为他们说话，那么没有人会听见他们的声音，”他论及自己的委托人，“不过历史会证明他们是对是错。”
Fighting cases that you never win could be demoralizing, but Mr. Mo insists his efforts eventually will be vindicated. “If you don’t even speak for them, no one will hear their voices,” he said of his clients. “But history will prove whether they were right or wrong.”
莫 律师称近几年律师的形势尤为严峻。他列举了总部设在北京的公盟的例子，这个法律援助机构向中国的“黑监狱”还有死刑犯的权利限制发起了挑战，而最近却因为 所谓的逃税而被关闭；然后至少有十二位以上的维权律师因为强制性的年检而被停牌，当局正是利用这个广受恶评的审批机制叫停不受待见的律师的执业资格。
Mr. Mo says recent years have been particularly difficult for lawyers. He cited the example of the Beijing-based legal aid center Open Constitution Initiative, which has challenged China’s so-called “black jails” and campaigned for the rights of death-row inmates. Recently it was shut down, ostensibly for tax evasion. And more than a dozen rights lawyers were disbarred after failing a mandatory annual review, widely criticized as a vetting system to disqualify lawyers disliked by the authorities.
“如果这就是用来打击或者针对不听话的，”莫律师说“那么这完全不正确。”
“If this is used to crack down on or to target those who are not obedient,” Mr. Mo said, “then it isn’t right.”
鉴于其工作环境之苛刻以及他引发的公众关注度，时代周刊在2003年命名其“亚洲英雄”之称号，2007年他又领取了法国政府颁发的人权奖。莫律师是否担忧被针对呢？
Given such harsh conditions, and the publicity his career has attracted — Time magazine named him an “Asian Hero” in 2003, and he received the French government’s human rights prize in 2007 — is Mr. Mo worried that he might be a target?
他说他的太太，同样也是一位律师，为他担忧，他的电话被监听，当局经常因为他处理的案件传唤他。至今他还可以自由的出行和执业，莫律师认为主要是因为他专注于案子的法律细节而避免了政治言论情绪，“我为推动民主和法律的进步做我的贡献，但是写陈词不是我的事了。”
He said his wife, who also is a lawyer, worries about him. His phone is monitored, and the authorities often summon him over cases he is handling.
Still, Mr. Mo believes he has been allowed to continue his practice and travel freely because he focuses on the legal technicalities of his cases and avoids emotive political statements. “I do my bit to push forward democracy and rule of law,” he said, “but writing essays is not my thing.”
尼古拉斯·白魁林，资深的亚洲人权观察调查员说很少有律师有莫律师的能力以如此职业和非政治化的方式去处理政治案。
Nicholas Bequelin, a senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said few lawyers had Mr. Mo’s ability to handle political cases in a strictly professional, depoliticized way.
“很少有律师能像他一样，”白魁林先生说，“因为他们缺乏必须的战术技巧去知悉何时进退，也许还因为北京容不下太多能为那些大牌异见人士出头的辩护律师。”
“Not many lawyers have been able to emulate his example,” Mr. Bequelin said, “because they lacked the tactical skills needed to know when to back down and when to push forward, but also because Beijing was not ready to tolerate many more prominent defenders for high-profile dissidents.”
莫律师仍然对本国的未来充满希望。他说民主永远不会是一条坦途。“这是一个历史的趋势，中国会向民主化，法制化，宪政化前进，没有人可以阻挡历史的车轮。”
Mr. Mo remains hopeful about his country’s future. Democracy, he said, is never a straightforward road. “It’s a historical trend. China will move towards democracy, rule of law and constitutional governance,” he said. “And no one can stand in its way.”
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