The Chinese Communist Party expelled the country’s former long-serving Justice Minister, 65-year Wu Aiying, for unspecified corruption charges just days before the 19th Party Congress opens in Beijing on October 18. Wu Aiying disappeared from public view in February when she was dismissed by the country’s legislature after 12 years at the head of the Ministry of Justice. 

(Comment: More than 40 Chinese lawyers and nearly 400 activists had called for Wu Aiying’s dismissal in a petition sent to the State Council and the National People’s Congress in October last year, accusing her of being responsible for a series of “unlawful” regulations that had severely violated lawyers’ rights. Wu was one of only 10 women on the 18th Central Committee selected in 2012. In all 18 full Central Committee members and another 17 alternate members have been dismissed in the anti-corruption campaign, more than the combined total for the four previous Central Committees.)