The CEDAW Committee expresses concern about harassment of women human rights defenders in China; Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance says Jimmy Lai can and will get a fair trial; the lower house of Japan’s legislature approves major revisions to the Penal Code for sexual offenses; the South Korean legislature fails to override a presidential veto of the controversial Nursing Act; Taiwan’s president nominates four candidates to fill upcoming vacancies on the Constitutional Court.

A well-known Beijing LGBT organization is closed after 15 years; the Hong Kong Court of First Instance says it lacks jurisdiction to review the government’s denial of a visa to publisher Jimmy Lai’s UK lawyer; Japan’s ruling party submits a weakened LGBTQ+ rights bill to the legislature; a South Korean court orders the country’s biggest adoption agency to compensate an adoptee for mishandling his case; Taiwan allows same-sex couples to adopt children not biologically related to them.

A rights group claims that China is increasing its use of exit bans; Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal hears arguments in a press freedom case; the Japanese government submits legislation to punish persons who surreptitiously take sexually exploitative photos; South Korea resumes a crackdown on illegal immigration; Taiwan restricts China-bound travel by persons who work with state-funded core technologies.

A Chinese court sentences to two prominent human rights lawyers to lengthy prison terms; Japan’s legislature advances a bill that would allow courts to order GPS monitoring of suspects released on bail; the South Korean Supreme Court rules that Google must disclose whether it shared personal information of South Korean nationals with third parties; Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice proposes to revise the Civil Code to ban corporal punishment of children by their parents.

A Chinese court sentences six defendants in a high-profile human trafficking case; a former democratic politician tells a Hong Kong court that legal scholar Benny Tai’s 2020 election plan could have led to a catastrophe; a Tokyo court orders Waseda University and its former professor to pay damages to a former student for sexual harassment; a South Korean court approves the seizure of four more Mitsubishi patent rights to compensation the victims of forced labor in World War II; lawyers in Taiwan seek the release of a man who has been held on death row for 35 years.

China’s Communist Party launches a political campaign aimed at weeding out disloyal or corrupt cadres in the party-state’s anti-corruption organs; Hong Kong’s national security police question four former members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions; two senior politicians in Japan’s ruling party call for reforming the child custody rules so that divorced parents are not driven to abduct their children from each other; South Korea’s Constitutional Court upholds legislation that significantly reduced prosecutors’ investigatory powers; Taiwan’s Constitutional Court orders the legislature to more narrowly tailor a law that says a party at fault cannot file for divorce.

China’s National People’s Congress confirms Xi Jinping’s third five-year term as president during its annual plenary meeting; a planned women’s rights march in Hong Kong is called off and police warn activists not to assemble; Japan’s Supreme Court rules that the country’s personal ID number system is constitutional; South Korea’s government proposes to lengthen the legal workweek to 69 hours from the current 52; Taiwan’s Supreme Administrative Court upholds a fine against China Airlines following a foiled attempt by airline employees to smuggle cigarettes on a plane chartered by President Tsai Ing-wen.

China has a new minister of justice; Hong Kong’s Department of Justice proposes to require chief executive approval for a foreign lawyer to represent a client in cases related to national security; a Japanese court awards compensation to a woman forcibly sterilized in 1970; a South Korean court says same-sex couples are entitled to spousal coverage in the National Health Insurance Service; a court in Taiwan says mainland Chinese nationals are treated as Republic of China citizens when seeking state compensation for wrongful death and injury.