Bloggers Push China to Prosecute Beating Death

By David Barboza | The New York Times
January 18, 2008

More than 100 people are under investigation and several government officials have been detained or removed from office in central China after a dispute in early January in which a group of city officials beat a bystander to death.

The government investigation, which was reported by state-run news outlets here, was touched off by bloggers in China who were outraged that a 41-year-old man had been fatally beaten while trying to use his cellphone to photograph a dispute between villagers and city inspectors.

City officials in Tianmen in Hubei Province in central China are being punished and investigated for their role in the killing of the man, Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a construction company, and the beatings of five villagers during a dispute on Jan. 7, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

The episode is the latest in which bloggers and others have used the Internet to force Chinese authorities to investigate beatings and other abuses by government officials.

With China's economy booming and developers transforming big cities and even small villages with huge building projects, clashes between angry residents and public officials have increased, partly because China's legal system is so ineffective and government corruption is perceived to be widespread.

Large public protests are outlawed in China, but when they do occur, local governments and even big cities often call in the police or other security teams to quash them. Occasionally, the battles become deadly.

On Jan. 7, the government says a dispute in a village near Tianmen broke out because villagers were angry over the dumping of heaps of garbage near their homes. Apparently, some villagers had tried to stop a truck from dumping garbage in their neighborhood.

To put down the protest, the government says, local officials called in a large group of parapolice officials, who are often used to quell uprisings or deal with unlicensed business operations in cities.

Mr. Wei apparently drove by in a car and stopped to photograph the skirmish with his cellphone. He was confronted by government inspectors and beaten to death. It is unclear what happened to the images captured on his cellphone.

Soon after, several large protests took place in Tianmen as residents demanded justice.

Once word of the beating spread, bloggers expressed outrage. One posting asked whether the officials had been city inspectors or a mob.

"Where is justice?" one bulletin board posting read. "Where is the law? Aren't there any rules in China?"

Within days, the government detained the leader of the inspection team and removed Qi Zhengjun, director of the Urban Administration Department in Tianmen.

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