A Chinese tourist in Beijing was dragged from his hotel room, savagely beaten, driven home and dumped unconscious at the roadside after being taken for a petitioner, state media reported yesterday.
Under a system dating from imperial times, Chinese people can petition government authorities at various levels over injustices or unresolved disputes such as illegal land grabs or police misconduct.
Millions do so each year, but many complain of official indifference to their concerns and those from the provinces will sometimes travel to Beijing to lodge their grievances with the State Bureau of Letters and Calls.
Photo: Reuters
IMAGE
However, local officials try to prevent complaints being lodged against them in the capital to preserve their area’s image.
Zhao Zhifei (趙志斐), a tourist from Luoyang in Henan Province, was staying in a hotel near the bureau when a group of people barged into his room and dragged him into a van along with three petitioners from his province, Xinhua reported.
On the way back to Luoyang Zhao was brutally beaten, the news agency cited officials as saying, and newspapers published pictures of him, dressed in rags, lying unconscious by the side of the road in his hometown.
The incident provoked outrage among China’s vast Internet population.
“All those who took part in his abduction should be convicted of kidnapping and wilful assault and wounding,” one post signed Hailangqi on the sohu.com portal said.
“This kind of incident keeps happening in China,” another poster said, without giving a name.
Xinhua quoted authorities saying employees of a Beijing security firm hired by the bureau were responsible for the beating.
PUNISHMENT
Six people had been punished, it added — one removed from his post, another suspended and four given warnings — while a senior official had apologized to Zhao.
Petitioners have regularly reported being detained by authorities in so-called “black jails.”
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) visited the bureau in January to meet petitioners, a move seen as highlighting the mounting anger felt by many Chinese living in a one-party state that enforces its will by diktat.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including