As they awaited their fates in holding cell No. 9 of the Puning County jail, Li Qiaoming (李蕎明) and half a dozen fellow inmates played “elude the cat,” a Chinese hide-and-seek.
Li put on a blindfold, groped for quarry and soon was lying on the floor with a fatal head injury.
That, at least, is the story disseminated by the police in Yunnan Province, where Li, a 24-year-old farmer, lived and died this month after his arrest on charges of illegal logging.
Public reaction to the official explanation of Li’s death was swift. Thousands of Internet users surmised that Li died from a beating by the police.
Rather than suppress the accusations, provincial officials invited the public to help solve the case. They sorted through 1,000 volunteers to choose a 15-person committee that would visit the scene of the crime, cull the evidence and “discover the truth.”
The results proved dispiriting to those who hoped for an investigation of the police. But the case riveted the public and fueled a discussion online and in state-run media about the extent — and limits — of official attempts to shape public opinion.
In explaining his motives for a citizen investigation, Wu Hao (伍皓) of Yunnan’s propaganda department said he hoped to restore faith in a government that could be unresponsive to accusations of misconduct.
In an interview with Chinese reporters this week, he said the authorities could easily have quashed the debate, but “past experience has shown that the doubts of the netizens will not shift or recede.”
Although the reaction to Wu’s effort was initially favorable, it soon soured. When they arrived at the jail last Friday, the committee members were given access to the crime scene but were not allowed to view surveillance tapes, examine the autopsy report or question the guards.
They were also not permitted to interview the prime suspect, Pu Huayong (普華永), an inmate who police said had been unhappy with the outcome of the “elude the cat” game and attacked Li.
Soon after disclosing the identities of the “volunteers,” Web users also found that nearly all the “randomly selected” investigators were current or former employees of the state-run media. The team leader, Zhao Li (趙立), had worked as an “Internet commentator” to shape debate online with pro-government postings.
Over the past week, more than 70,000 postings accumulated on one of China’s most popular bulletin boards and many were less than sympathetic.
Even the Beijing News criticized the process.
“We’ve learned two lessons from this case,” it said. “One is that such inspections cannot solely rely on passion and idealism but on rational and pragmatic work. The second is that this has again exposed the flaws of the current system and that the need to establish an independent investigation system involving experts is urgent.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS