The most senior official charged in a major crackdown on organized crime and graft in southwestern China went on trial yesterday, in the climax of a lurid, sensational court marathon.
Wen Qiang (文強), former director of the justice department in Chongqing, went on trial accused of accepting bribes, protecting mafia rings and rape, a court statement said.
He was being tried along with his wife and three top police officials in proceedings that began early yesterday and were expected to last five days, said the statement by the No. 5 Intermediate People’s Court.
PHOTO: AFP
Wen, 54, along with his wife Zhou Xiaoya (周小雅), is accused of accepting 19 million yuan (US$2.8 million) in bribes. The charges against Wen, who was also once a top-ranked Chongqing police department official, included four counts of rape, the statement said.
Previous state press reports have alleged he raped a string of women including B-list film and music starlets.
Such lurid details, along with widespread speculation the crackdown was linked to political maneuvring at the apex of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have gripped the nation since trials began late last year.
The case has come to symbolize China’s struggle against rampant corruption and expanding organized crime.
The CCP has railed against graft for years, seeking to counter public anger over regular reports of larcenous officials and stories of excess and debauchery among party leaders.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) himself has repeatedly warned that graft threatens to undermine the party’s legitimacy.
In a sign of the public interest in the case, the court received applications from 72 media organizations from across the nation seeking to attend Wen’s trial, a local Chongqing news Web site said.
The crackdown is widely seen as a bid by Bo Xilai (薄熙來) — who was appointed party secretary of Chongqing in 2007 and is considered one of the party’s most popular and charismatic figures — to move up in the national hierarchy.
Bo, a former commerce minister and son of revolutionary elder Bo Yibo (薄一波), is believed to be angling for a spot on the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the top national leadership, China politics analyst Willy Lam (林和立) said.
“Bo Xilai is making a last-ditch bid to get into the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012. He is 60 years old, so this is probably his last chance,” said Lam, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
Outside Havana, a combine belonging to a private Vietnamese company is harvesting rice, directly farming Cuban land — in a first — to help address acute food shortages in the country. The Cuban government has granted Agri VAM, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Fujinuco Group, 1,000 hectares of arable land in Los Palacios, 118km west of the capital. Vietnam has advised Cuba on rice cultivation in the past, but this is the first time a private firm has done the farming itself. The government approved the move after a 52 percent plunge in overall agricultural production between 2018 and 2023, according to data
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
RSS