Fourteen Chinese accused of organizing an orgy involving hundreds of Japanese visitors around the anniversary of Japan's invasion of China went on trial yesterday in a case that has sparked public outrage.
Security was tight in and around the People's Intermediate Court in southern Zhuhai, with police standing by to prevent anti-Japanese protests, underlining the sensitivity of the case.
The defendants, mostly suspected pimps, went on trial behind closed doors.
It was unclear how they pleaded, but they face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of "organizing prostitution."
The scandal has sparked outrage in China, particularly on the Internet, and embarrassed Bei-jing and Tokyo.
The verdict is expected today.
State media have said the two-day orgy at a five-star hotel in the coastal city of Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, in September involved about 400 Japanese tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes.
The incident sparked fury in China particularly because it ended on Sept. 18, the 72nd anniversary of the start of Japan's occupation of China's northeast.
No Japanese have been indicted in the case so far, drawing angry comments on the bulletin board of the Sina.com Web site (www.sina.com.cn). The bulletin board has been flooded with more than 34,000 entries on Japan-related issues. The time period was unclear.
"Why were those who went whoring not on trial?" one said.
"Chinese should unite and boycott Japanese goods," said another.
Sina said the defendants included two executives of the Zhuhai International Conference Center Hotel, where state media says the orgy took place. The 22-story hotel was closed after the incident and reopened earlier this month, a hotel spokesman said.
Prostitution is technically illegal in China
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
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
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
RSS