Police in the China’s eastern Shandong Province have arrested a group it said organized mass protests in an attempt to sway court cases and influence sentences, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The group paid a “relatively regular” group of people to stage protests, ostensibly about protecting the rights of petitioners and lawyers working on their behalf, Xinhua said late on Sunday.
It named two of the people police detained as Zhai Yanmin (翟巖民), 54, who paid people to stage the protests, and lawyer Liu Jianjun (劉建軍), who hoped to influence judges trying his cases with the protests, the report said.
“The group was close-knitted with specific assignments for its members, and their activities were seen in heated cases across the country,” Xinhua said, in a report that was also posted on the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Web site.
The protesters held up banners and signs, shouted slogans and “hyped up” what was happening on Chinese and overseas Web sites, it added.
Tens of thousands of “mass incidents” — the usual euphemism for protests — occur each year in China, triggered by corruption, pollution, illegal land grabs and other grievances, unnerving the stability-obsessed ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Many people try to use “petitions” to bypass the legal system and directly bring complaints to the attention of government officials in a system that dates back to imperial times, although some cases do end up in court.
However, few cases ever get resolved, and petitioners can stage noisy protests out of frustration.
Despite international criticism, petitioners are often forced home or held in “black jails,” unlawful secret detention facilities where detainees can be subjected to beatings, sleep and food deprivation and psychological abuse.
China has made a series of efforts to reform the system by cracking down on illegal imprisonment of petitioners and pushing for the process to go online. The government does not formally acknowledge that black prisons exist.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
RSS