China sentenced 23 members of a gang to jail for up to 20 years for crimes including the involvement in rioting last year over police handling of a teenage girl’s death, a court said yesterday.
About 30,000 people set fire to government buildings and overturned vehicles in Guizhou Province’s Weng’an county in July last year, following a police report on the death of a 17-year-old girl.
Family and friends alleged she was raped and killed, possibly by the sons of local officials, but the autopsy report said she had drowned.
A report posted on the official Web site of the Supreme People’s Court said members of a gang led by Liu Changjun (劉昌君) had instigated crowds of young people to break into government buildings and attack police during the riots.
Liu was sentenced to 20 years in jail on charges that also included organizing a gang, operating gambling houses, extortion, blackmail and other crimes. The other gang members received jail terms of between one and 20 years.
Several top officials in the region — the county Communist Party chief, the county government chief and the police chief — were fired from their posts for negligence over the incident.
Riots and protests by local citizens over official corruption, land confiscation and a growing gap between the rich and poor have been an increasing problem for China’s communist leaders in recent years.
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