A rights group said yesterday that a teacher who posted pictures online of schools that collapsed when a massive earthquake hit Sichuan Province in May has been sent to a labor camp for one year.
Human Rights in China said Liu Shaokun (劉紹坤) had been ordered to serve a year of “reeducation through labor,” a system that sidesteps the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge.
It said in a statement that Liu, a teacher at Guanghan Middle School in Deyang City, was detained on June 25 for “disseminating rumors and destroying social order.” His wife was told one week ago that he had been sent to a labor camp.
The May 12 earthquake killed nearly 70,000 people, including thousands of children who died when their shoddily built schools collapsed. The issue has become a sensitive political issue, with parents of dead children staging protests demanding investigations. In recent weeks they have also been subjected to intimidation and financial inducements to silence them.
“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to reeducation through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others,” Human Rights in China executive director Sharon Hom said.
The group said Liu’s family has not been able to see him since he was detained.
An official at the Communist Party’s propaganda office in Guanghan said he had not heard of the case.
He would give only his surname Tang as is common among Chinese bureaucrats.
Another official with the general office of the Guanghan school said Liu had been working there since 2002.
“He was detained late last month by people from national security bureau for deliberately inciting families of victims to petition and disseminating anti-government rumors. They searched his home and found evidence,” said the official, who refused to give his name.
The reeducation through labor system has been widely criticized by the UN, the EU and other organizations, which say it should be abolished as part of Beijing’s acceptance of international legal norms.
Meanwhile, the finance ministry has earmarked 1.34 billion yuan (US$196 million) to repair and rebuild schools in badly hit areas in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, the Beijing Times reported yesterday.
It has also given out 980 million yuan for schools to buy teaching equipment and facilities, it said.
The money is part of a 70-billion-yuan budget the central government set aside this year for reconstruction after the earthquake.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
RSS