A Chinese blogger has been beaten to death by Government authorities for the crime of attempting to record a protest on his mobile phone.
When Wei was present at some sort of confrontation or protest by local villages against municipal authorities when more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes.
According to CNN, the killing has sparked outrage in China, “with thousands expressing outrage in Chinese Internet chat rooms, often the only outlet for public criticism of the government.”
The Chinese Government has moved swiftly to detain those involved, arresting 24 municipal inspectors whilst investigating more than 100 others in relation to the incident. Notably (for China) the story was published by the official state news service Xinhua, in what is believed to be an attempt to head off dissent over the mater by demonstrating that the Chinese Government does not condone those involved in the beating.
(image credit: AP/ CNN)
Jeez. China is such an affront to human rights. And blogging seems to be a job hazard in such areas of the world.
Kudos to blogger, they’re like the firemen of this age.
China is in for some big changes over the coming decades, you can’t keep information about freedom from getting out while at the same time, entering into a global economy.
Jon
http://buzvia.com – Share Influence
I know a way bloggers can hit back at china. A blogger boycott of the olympics should be organized. All bloggers should not write anything about the olympics and instead spend the time reporting on their human rights abuses.
Buzvia is such a stupid idea.
So what they’re really saying is that the officials didn’t cover up this beating well enough, let it get out to international media, and therefore should be punished.
@hallson because unfortunately it hurts the athletes, not the corporate sponsors or the gov’t who already has the money etc.
I for one welcome our Chinese communist media-censoring by any means necessary overloads… NOT!!!
It’s really a human-made tragedy. But I have no idea the brave man was a blogger, please check the source how it was reported and point to his blog address.
Bad if true.
No. The poor man is not a blogger. He is a manager of a respectable company.
The killer are so-called “city law protector” (not police)
Well, it is right. This man is not a blogger. He is a GM of a local company. The local government is trying to settle this case by offering a free education fund for his children. Is that going to help?
I don’t think so!
It’s true that the man was killed for photographing with his mobile phone.
I can only go on what press reports are saying (CNN’s headline was ” China blogger beaten to death”). At least half are calling him a blogger according to a quick look on Google news, and a significant number of outlets are referring to him as a “citizen journalist.” If he’s not a blogger per se so be it, but they guy still got beaten up for taking video on his mobile phone, and no matter what he was it’s still bloody awful.
Since this is how China treats its own citizens I think we know how China will treat the rest of us in the years ahead.
It’s not “China” per se, it’s the municipal inspector force. In America we have security guards tasing people for asking questions during a political speech but that’s not “America”.
On second thought, maybe that is America.
<sadmusic>China.. oh China… We see the tears on your face…</sadmusic>
<sadmusic>China.. oh China… We see the tears on your face…</sadmusic>
This is bad. I’m glad I don’t blog from China.
Developed countries will no doubt turn a blind eye to these atrocities.
Anybody remembers Amadou Diallo or Rodney King? Why are we always pointing fingers at the others?
Just because this happened in China doesn’t mean it’s a government sanctioned action. “Municipal Inspectors” are security guards hired by local government to maintain order, much like security guards hired by a local city hall in the US.
Yea it’s a tragedy and it should have never happened. But this is not human rights violation.
Can’t wait for the Olympics. China is a beautiful place.
This post simply does not read the fact in a neutral way.
The event has nothing to do with the violation of human rights or blogger although it’s a tragedy.
Thank you George.
I was watching this thread, just wondering if anyone had even a remote inkling of the facts. You have restored my faith in the internet friend.
On another note, I wonder how we might encourage data gathering and critical thinking here more? This crowd is not like Digg. Everyone here is worth saving from the abyss of emotion and political and religious fundamentalism that seems to be swallowing whole our capacity for thought.
China has so many things wrong with it, that it is not necessary to complain when they do something right. ie – hold ‘Blackwater’ style mercenaries accountable. For that matter, so do we. The thing is that these negatives need to be put in perspective. Everyone rails against the US and China polluting everything. Even though a look at the data tells us that while the US produces 5x more than China per capita, Australia produces 11x more than China per capita. Question from a critical thinker . . . How many protests against Australia’s profligate behavior have any of those who rail against the US and China been to? People like to get up in arms about the Three Gorges Dam. All the while these armchair environmentalist are blissfully unaware of the number of Damming projects in the lesser asian nations. Take a gander at what is going on along the Mekong for instance.
Get the data.
Make your own decisions.
Turn off the TV.
As a Chinese myself, every time I read this kind of news, I feel sad and angry, yet can do nothing to help. This is just one of the “3Ps” I summarized about the negative side of China, Population, Pollution & Politics. I just hope pressure from both in and outside China on the Communist government will change the OmniParty a bit, just a little bit.
@hallson I can’t agree more with your idea.
slowly but surely, China will go towards the universal Human rights, and Internet and connectivity plays a huge role in people fighting for their individual freedom.
Internet will become a basis of communication of ideas, radical ,threatening and ultimately that any government will hardly be ever able to control !
Ujw
exoticbuddha.com
Tough time to be a blogger in China.
However the authorities there should understand that they cannot, and I mean CANNOT censor the Internet. You can kill ‘em, but you cannot silence ‘em.
just like Meeno, i’m also a chinese,sad and angry at hearing the news. china still has a long way to go in both economy and civilization. well this brutal incident deserves critics from all races of people.
however, it may not be good or fair to lead to any political attack on china. instead, it should lead to personal sorrow and self-blame for all human beings. when looked in retrospect, slaughter and blood was the sacrifice of modern and democratic civilization.all leading countries have also a bloody past. for being modern, we’ve lost too much! the current china is just a mirror of the past of all human beings. So let us hope things will getting better. as a chinese, i do hope things will getting better!
Oh what a horrible horrible violation of human rights.
to Phillip how can you compare Australia’s pollution with China or the US for that matter.
Australia hasn’t overpopulated its country like the Chinese have.
Australia has 2.6 people per sq km & a total population of approx 20million.
China has approx 135 people per sq km & a total population of approx 1.3 billion.
For arguments sake say China emmits 1 tonne of Co2 per person.
Australia you say is 11 x that at say 11 tonnes per person
Well, we all know who is really causing the most damage to the planet & the environment – China 1.3 billions tonnes. Aussie 220 million tonnes. I think you will find Australia becomes carbon neutral way before China does & they don’t have smog & pollution problems in most of their cities like China does. Your argument could apply to most of the nations in the developed world if you compared them against 3rd world countries say in Africa. Then of course you have all the Chinese people who have immigrated to other countries. Chinese people on this planet use up way more resources than Australians!
Even the Chinese wiki is different to every other country in that you can’t get simple facts like population, gdp, people per sq km etc
http://en.wikip....org/wiki/China
http://en.wikip.../wiki/Australia
Do the government update their wiki as well? China is a developing country, their output per of Co2 will be going up per person – especially once the Olympics have finished!
Simply human wrong, not human rights..
Human right? The answer is not clear. Some one argues that it’s only a mistake. That’s true, only partially. This kind of things happened frequently in recent years. And I think mistake could not explain all.
We all live in an imperfect world…
This is extremely bad…
Being beaten to death: a random mistake.
Being beaten because of photographing conflicts between “Municipal Guards” and peasants: not a mistake.
I know that these incidents happen each year in the country. But I am sure this kind of things will be fewer and fewer.
The good thing is Chinese Central Government wants to do something to improve human rights. The bad thing is the change won’t be occur in one day. China is as large as US, but not that balanced developed, so some places and some people are still incivilized.
The other reason is that Chinese Central Government and Chinese local government are not always accordant, which makes Chinese human rights may not be ensured in some places sometimes.
Democracy is a way to solve these problems. and may also Multi-Party policy come. But now, Chinese people should still count on Communist Party, at least, the party is not monster now.
i come from chinese.Wei is not a blogger . He is a company’s general manager, he was only passing through it.
Blogger or not, it doesn’t matter.
And this is not the first time here, those government-hired gangsters (they got a new name “municipal inspectors”?, huh) beaten innocent people to death.
Is it not a human rights problem? Maybe it even worse, it is a humanity-lost problem, those bastards is just losing their humanity and becoming wild animals.
“Everyone rails against the US and China polluting everything.”
These two super powers do have a tremendous influence globally.
Duncan, your are right this time.
In fact,we have been numb for it ,even if it’s much worse,The Goverment drop too many their dignity, they are vermin.
So,this news can’t be the headline in our country(China) as we known,it’s so woefully.
I’m not going to state my position one way or the other on this, but I read TechCrunch for tech and startup news and opinion, not politics. There are so many better sources out there for political comment that I don’t see why TC needs to wade in with this inept opining. It was exactly the same when the Australian internet censorship story came up in the New Year silly season. Stick to what you’re good at, TC!
Writers across the world just have some inborn tendency to troll against China… (which might not be a bad thing)…
this case is isolated case. although it gets people’s blood boiled, it is a rare and extreme case and shouldn’t been taken into consideration when analyzing the problem and forming opinions on China today. It is the freedom of speech the issue that has been ignored everyday and deserve more attention and discussion.
@Andy: But this is exactly the kind of crap reporting that Duncan excels at. Talk about fact-checking, he even got the headline wrong!
Freedom of speech requires political reform, which won’t happen anytime soon.. particularly unlikely for the next 10-20 years.
Hey wake up. We have sold USA to China….wake up