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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to