Police in the China’s eastern Shandong Province have arrested a group it said organized mass protests in an attempt to sway court cases and influence sentences, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The group paid a “relatively regular” group of people to stage protests, ostensibly about protecting the rights of petitioners and lawyers working on their behalf, Xinhua said late on Sunday.
It named two of the people police detained as Zhai Yanmin (翟巖民), 54, who paid people to stage the protests, and lawyer Liu Jianjun (劉建軍), who hoped to influence judges trying his cases with the protests, the report said.
“The group was close-knitted with specific assignments for its members, and their activities were seen in heated cases across the country,” Xinhua said, in a report that was also posted on the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Web site.
The protesters held up banners and signs, shouted slogans and “hyped up” what was happening on Chinese and overseas Web sites, it added.
Tens of thousands of “mass incidents” — the usual euphemism for protests — occur each year in China, triggered by corruption, pollution, illegal land grabs and other grievances, unnerving the stability-obsessed ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Many people try to use “petitions” to bypass the legal system and directly bring complaints to the attention of government officials in a system that dates back to imperial times, although some cases do end up in court.
However, few cases ever get resolved, and petitioners can stage noisy protests out of frustration.
Despite international criticism, petitioners are often forced home or held in “black jails,” unlawful secret detention facilities where detainees can be subjected to beatings, sleep and food deprivation and psychological abuse.
China has made a series of efforts to reform the system by cracking down on illegal imprisonment of petitioners and pushing for the process to go online. The government does not formally acknowledge that black prisons exist.
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
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
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
RSS