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‘There are cases where the client’s goal will not be achieved by legal work alone’
Marque Lawyers’ Michael Bradley has shared his key takeaways after advising a client whose quest to save his wife and child from China’s persecution of Uyghurs proved to be the “most significant success” of his career.
Jess Feyder
Sadam Abdusalam’s effort to save his wife and child from China’s persecution of Uyghurs first caught the attention of managing partner Michael Bradley and his team at Sydney firm Marque Lawyers several years ago.
The Chinese government has been rounding up and detaining the Uyghurs, a population of Turkic Muslims. A process of “ethnic cleansing” is taking place in an attempt to strip Uyghurs of their culture, religion and heritage — along with removing children from their parents.
As many as a million citizens are being held in the detention centre.
Human rights groups from around the globe have condemned the process as inhumane acts of arbitrary detention, forced labour, and oppression of religious and ethnic minorities.
Freeing My Family, written by Mr Abdusalam and Mr Bradley, documents the persecution of the Uyghurs and the effort made to rescue Mr Abdusalam’s wife Nadila and son Lutfi from imminent persecution.
Mr Bradley spoke to Lawyers Weekly about the journey and how they reached success. From 2016 until their rehoming in Australia, Mr Abdusalam’s wife and son remained in danger, as the Chinese government’s crackdown on Uyghurs gained force.
Mr Bradley took on his case pro bono and engaged in a laborious process of attempting to secure Australian citizenship for Nadila and Lutfi.
The process was arduous, with a series of failed attempts and appeals in Australian courts, they jumped barriers created by the Chinese government as attempts to block them were made, including police confiscating Nadila’s passport.
Mr Bradley and his team used a variety of strategies to leverage Mr Abdusalam’s case, and eventually, they were successful. In December 2020, the family was reunited in Australia.
Mr Bradley was personally moved by the case. “You couldn’t not care about Sadam,” he wrote in the prologue. “Anybody would be moved by his predicament and wish for the obvious happy ending to his troubles.
“Sadam had got under my skin; the first client in my 30 years as a lawyer to achieve that.”
Mr Bradley spoke to Lawyers Weekly about the tense predicament and the process of working on Mr Abdusalam’s case.
“The thing that always sat with me during the years we were helping Sadam was that it was highly probable there would be no happy ending to this story, and there was nothing in our skill set as lawyers that we could employ to prevent that,” he said.
“The hardest times were the long periods when little or nothing was happening, just tiny marks of progress, and we were trying to keep Sadam afloat.
“However, anything we endured was nothing compared to what he and Nadila were going through, and I think their dependence on us left us with no choice but to keep working and hoping for the best.”
He then reflected on the unique efforts needed to drive for success in Mr Abdusalam’s case.
“There are cases where the client’s goal will not be achieved by legal work alone,” he said.
“It’s important to be open-minded about what else may be needed, in Sadam’s case, a combination of legal, media and political leverage.”
The evidence given in Mr Abdusalam’s court cases was unique. They presented the court with “country information evidence” — which is often relied on in asylum cases.
It consists of general evidence from sources such as government bodies, international aid agencies or media reporting — as to give the factual realities on the ground in the relevant country.
“Perhaps most compelling was a report, referenced by the judge in her ultimate ruling, by Radio Free Australia titled ‘Dozens of Uyghur children of Xinjiang village camp detainees sent to live in orphanages’.
“It recounted statements by local officials in regional towns confirming that the children detained were routinely being sent to state-run orphanages and being sent to mainland China,” wrote Mr Bradley.
The team also involved Australian media outlets to a significant degree, and had Mr Abdusalam appear for interviews on significant news media outlets.
“I can honestly say it was the most significant success of my career,” reflected Mr Bradley.
“To feel that we played a major part in the rescue and reunification of this one small family is incredibly rewarding.”
