Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

Though a rumored live broadcast of the actual executions failed to materialize, the TV coverage attracted heavy criticism. “It’s hard to see how that spectacle doesn’t violate [the] prohibition on parading condemned in the streets,” tweeted human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig, referring to a 1984 ban introduced to avoid unfavorable foreign media coverage. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented that China had “just wiped away any perception that it was making progress on the death penalty issue.” Within China, reactions to the broadcast were deeply polarized. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

At Bloomberg World View, Adam Minter described the spectacle as a “graphic extension” of a broader political strategy:

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

China’s Global Times recently revealed that authorities had considered killing Naw Kham with a drone strike instead of capturing him. See more on China’s drone programs, and more on the death penalty in China, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV, death penalty, diplomacy, drug trafficking, execution, Golden Triangle, human rights watch, Japan, legal system, Mao era, Mekong river, murders, Murong Xuecun, Myanmar, Southeast Asia, territorial disputes, thailand
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We’ve learned a hard lesson in Chongqing at the cost of both lives and blood.

[…] If I was to describe how they acted in Chongqing over these past few years, I’d say they were like a crazy mouse on a rollercoaster going to a slippery slide. The newly-appointed leaders of the city’s public security apparatus are strongly opposed to the way that former party chief Bo Xilai and former head of the Public Security Bureau Wang Lijun handled matters in the past.

Now many just causes are gradually being rehabilitated.

But how many people were actually detained during the crackdown? How many were prosecuted? How many were sentenced to death or re-education through labor … we need to be clear on these numbers. We have a duty to history and to the people.

[…] If we don’t reveal what really went on, if we don’t expose their crimes and terrible deeds, many ordinary people will remain in the dark and we will be on the wrong side of history.

Also at Economic Observer, Li’s own lawyer Chen Youxi outlines how Bo’s ‘Chongqing Model’ almost succeeded, the damage it did, and the lessons that should be learned.

After two years of observation and deep thought, I believe that the underlying social foundations that led to the tragedy that occurred in Chongqing, continue to exist and flourish in China today. If we don’t seriously reflect on what happened in Chongqing, the soil which cultivated the tragedy in Chongqing will continue to exist, and if it doesn’t happen in Chongqing again, it just might take place somewhere else.

[…] If Wang Lijun hadn’t defected to the U.S. embassy and set off a series of other problems, it’s likely the Chongqing Model would have been copied across the country. If that happened, what would China’s rule of law be like? The more we think about it, the more we still feel have fears even after the events in Chongqing.

[…] In fact, the Chongqing’s problems are national problems that were concentrated and exposed in one municipality. It showed us the serious consequences of not continuing to deepen reform and also the great possibility and danger of the extreme-left making a comeback.

Reflecting on Chongqing is meaningful for the whole nation.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abuse of power, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Chongqing Model, corruption, lawyers, Li Zhuang, murders, organised crime, rule of law, strike black, torture, Wang Lijun
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The original blog post was quickly removed, but a cached version survives. On Friday, Wang put up another post explaining why she had spoken out. From a partial translation by Josh Chin at China Real Time:

As a forensics examiner in the supreme legal supervisory body of a great country that accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population, my life’s value at this point in time consists in resolutely examining and raising questions about possibly incorrect causes of death that fall within the scope of my official duties. It consists in snuffing out human errors that could result in disastrous desecration of the souls of dead men and in being a sanitation worker who does her utmost to quickly clean away the spiritual trash that pollutes people’s hearts and sullies social morals.

…No individual, no group, no organization can use me, Wang Xuemei, to speak the lies they want to speak or commit the sins they want to commit, because I’m a professional who is deeply loyal to the souls of the dead and who acts in accordance with what Heaven decrees.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, forensics, gu kailai, murders, Neil Heywood
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The verdict and sentence appear to wrap up one of the more lurid chapters of a sweeping scandal that brought down Ms. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, and challenged the Communist Party during a politically delicate, once-a-decade leadership transition that is set to culminate in the fall.

[…] Shortly after the verdict, Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province, told reporters that the court weighed Ms. Gu’s confession, her testimony that implicated others and the litany of psychological problems she is reported to have suffered. In the end, however, he said Mr. Heywood’s threats in no way justified her crimes.

[…] Legal analysts and political experts said Ms. Gu’s suspended death sentence was most likely calibrated to satisfy the Chinese public and the British government, but also supporters of Mr. Bo, who remains a darling among leftists and certain factions of the leadership enamored of his zealous campaign against organized crime and his efforts to address some of the income disparities that have accompanied three decades of free-market reform.

The British embassy issued a statement welcoming the investigation and trial, at which two of its diplomats were present as observers, and restated its opposition to the execution of Heywood’s killers.

Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog explained the probable reality of Gu’s punishment, which could ultimately be reduced to as little as nine years in prison.

Gu Kailai has been sentenced to death with a two-year suspension. Under Art. 50 of the Criminal Law, if she commits no new intentional crimes while in prison, that sentence will be commuted after two years to life imprisonment. It can even be commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment if she “genuinely demonstrates major merit” (确有重大立功表现). And further reductions are possible after the initial commutation.

Under Art. 78 of the Criminal Law and a 2011 Supreme People’s Court directive, those sentenced to life imprisonment or a term of years (including as a result of a commuted death sentence) may have their sentences reduced for good behavior (that’s my own term; Chinese law speaks of showing repentance or establishing merit) during their imprisonment. And various forms of good behavior are listed, including (in the 2011 SPC directive) paying compensation. Presumably that will not be a problem for Gu.

While state media have presented Gu’s trial as proof that all are equal before the law, the possibility of early parole has cultivated the opposite impression. Josh Chin surveyed some online reactions at The Wall Street Journal:

While censors appeared to be holding back in the first few hours after the verdict was reported, not all comments were allowed to stand. “A suspended death sentence isn’t surprising at all,” one Sina Weibo user wrote in a post that was quickly deleted. “From Jiang Qing to today, what government official’s family member has been given an actual death sentence for committing a serious crime? It’s an unspoken rule!”

And although cynicism dominated the early reactions, a handful of users tried to cast the verdict in a positive light — as a development that might help turn public opinion against capital punishment.

“It is extremely necessary for China to get rid of the death penalty,” argued on Sina Weibo user posting under the name Ke Luomu. “Capital punishment is the only service prepared exclusively for regular people.”

According to WSJ Chinese editor Li Yuan, however, the verdict’s moment in the Weibo spotlight quickly passed:

Weiboers have moved on from GKL verdict. They probably don’t really care. Now the focus is Myanmar ending censorship. When will it be China?

— Li Yuan (@LiYuan6) August 20, 2012

(Myanmar announced the abolition of direct censorship on Monday, though as Reuters’ Aung Hla Tun reports, other restrictions on press freedom will remain.)

A number of legal scholars and other observers have expressed scepticism about the trial based on second-hand accounts of the evidence presented. On Monday, a new inconsistency apparently emerged between the official version of events and the unheard testimony of Gu’s son, as reported by a family friend. From William Wan at The Washington Post:

“In the testimony, Bo Guagua asserted he didn’t meet Heywood and did not engage in anything with Heywood in recent years,” the person said.

[…] The assertions attributed to Gu’s son — who was studying until recently at Harvard University — cast doubts on the official narrative pushed by court officials and state-run media throughout Gu’s trial.

Court officials said Gu killed Heywood because he sent her son an email threatening him over business differences.

Those suspicious that the woman on trial was not Gu Kailai at all received unexpected support on Sunday. According to The Financial Times, “two security experts familiar with facial recognition software said the person shown in state television footage of the courtroom was not Ms Gu.” Meanwhile, still more outlandish rumours surfaced on Boxun—”which often makes claims difficult to prove”, as Want China Times delicately put it—that a former rival of Gu’s had been murdered, plastinated and put on display as part of the famous Body Worlds exhibition. (See a similar rumour debunked by Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth, via Bill Bishop).

With Gu’s case, for now, apparently closed, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page looked ahead to future developments in the Bo Xilai saga:

The next step toward concluding the scandal is widely expected to be the trial of Mr. Wang [Lijun], most likely on treason charges related to what authorities have called his “unauthorized” consulate visit. Mr. Wang, who was detained by Chinese security officers and placed under investigation after leaving the consulate, stepped down in June as a member of the national Parliament—a resignation that stripped him of immunity from prosecution.

Mr. Bo, however, is still a member both of the national Parliament and of the party—official exclusion from which is usually a necessary precursor to criminal charges, according to experts on Chinese politics and law.

[…] If Mr. Bo is dealt with internally by the party, a final decision on his fate could be announced by the autumn, but if he is turned over to the courts, many observers do not expect a trial until next year at the earliest.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, death penalty, death sentence, donald clarke, gu kailai, legal system, murders, Neil Heywood, rule of law, trials, Wang Lijun
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“The verdicts for Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun will be announced at 9 a.m. on Monday,” an official with the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court told Reuters.

[…] Chinese courts usually deliver verdicts and sentences at the same hearing, and Gu and Zhang could receive the death penalty.

But lawyers have said Gu is likely to receive a long prison term, possibly life, because government accounts of the case have stressed she was seeking to protect her son, Bo Guagua, who was until recently a student at Harvard University.

A guilty verdict is widely considered a foregone conclusion. At CNN, George Washington University Law School professor Donald Clarke wrote that despite its spicy ingredients and weighty political implications, the case would offer no more surprises:

[… M]ost China-watchers assume that proceedings in this case have been tightly controlled to ensure that only the officially approved narrative emerges. They assume that the verdict was decided in Beijing before the opening gavel sounded, and that the proceedings were merely a performance for the benefit of the public, a kind of judicial Shakespeare-in-the-park, but without the drama.

That’s the conventional wisdom. And at times like this, it’s the job of the think-outside-the-box expert to explain why the conventional wisdom is wrong. But it’s not. In fact, the trial is as predictable as it is banal. If anything is surprising, it’s the degree to which it utterly fails to upset our assumptions about how Chinese politics and the legal system work.

[…] The real lesson in this case, then, is twofold. First, it offers us no reason to change our understanding of the Chinese legal system as directly subservient to politics when sufficiently powerful politicians choose to get involved. Second, it reflects the cynicism that seems so pervasive in Chinese society. Nobody I know, Chinese or foreign, with the remotest knowledge of the Chinese legal system thinks that anything of importance will be decided as a result of what went on at the Gu trial.

Clarke also offered an extensive collection of “random thoughts” on the trial at his China Law Prof Blog.

When Gu and Zhang were formally charged with Heywood’s murder late last month, a Global Times editorial argued that the trial would present an opportunity to put Chinese rule of law on display. “The more details are revealed,” it said, “the more it will help build public confidence in China’s legal framework.” Xinhua’s lengthy official account of the trial echoed the editorial’s sentiments, repeatedly stressing the universality of rule of law in China:

Zheng Xiaoyan, a deputy to the National People’s Congress who attended the court hearing, said the public intentional homicide trial of Bogu Kailai and Zhang indicates that China is a socialist country governed by law. The dignity and authority of the law brook no violation.

[…] Zheng said everyone is equal before the law, so nobody is entitled to any privilege. The binding force of the law does not have exceptions. Any one who breaks the law must be severely punished.

“This case has drawn great attention from the public,” said Jiang Tao, a local resident from the Yaohai District of Hefei. “I attended the full hearing and felt the solemnness of the court and inviolability of the law.”

“The public trial shows that everyone is equal before the law. I hope that the court will make a fair judgement in accordance with the law,” Jiang Tao said.

Besides Xinhua’s, the most prominent account came from Zhao Xiangcha, who claims to have been present at the trial. It was translated into English by Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog:

Because it wasn’t permitted to bring any recording equipment into the courtroom, even a small pencil I had with me was confiscated. I can only rely on memory and inference to sum up the case, and this account includes subjective inferences I’ve made from the details of various pieces of testimony. If there are mistakes, omissions, or additions, don’t blame me.

[…] I feel that the entire courtroom adjudication process was fairly objective and just. There was a slight feeling that things had been rehearsed beforehand. But that didn’t affect the ultimate defining of the case. The facts really were clear and the evidence really was copious. The prosecutor didn’t bully people and the defence lawyers did everything they could. The testimony of the called witnesses (传唤证人的证词)[2] was very just and unbiased. To convict these two is absolutely just.

[…] I was fortunate enough to sit near Shen Zhigeng. Mr. Shen Zhigeng handled the defence in the Xiamen Yuanhua case several years ago, and this time the Bo family originally wanted him to be the defense attorney. But the lawyers had already been appointed by the judicial organs, and Mr. Shen could only attend as an observer. Shortly after the trial began, the lawyer had just begun to speak, and Shen sighed, “This case has been ruined by the lawyer.”

Clarke commented in his “random thoughts” that this account raised its own questions:

Who is Zhao Xiangcha, why was he allowed to attend the trial, and why did he feel it was fine to publish a report of the trial on line? This was a trial so sensitive that attendance was strictly controlled, and by Zhao’s own account even his pencil was confiscated. In 1980, Liu Qing was sentenced to prison for (among other things) distributing a transcript (not alleged to be inaccurate) of Wei Jingsheng’s supposedly public trial. Why was Zhao Xiangcha confident he could do this?

The carefully managed information allowed out of the courtroom has left many observers unconvinced. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos invoked Rashomon, suggesting that “given all [the] various incentives to steer the narrative in one direction or another, it’s best to see this less as a simple story of what happened than as a narrative constructed out of facts, accusations, and political imperatives.” (Beijing-based lawyer Stan Abrams suggested at China Hearsay that Shakespeare might fill in some of the blanks.) Peking University law professor He Weifang posted some sceptical comments on his Sina blog [zh] which were then translated, once more, by Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog:

[…] This kind of trial is just a show to cover up the truth. If this kind of case is not tried justly, then lies have to be used to cover up lies, leading to an impossible situation where the story doesn’t hold together and it becomes a satire of justice.

In any case, as far as the bit of the iceberg that was exposed is concerned, we can see who the real mafia in Chongqing are.

At Caixin, founder and editor Hu Shuli similarly argued that the trial revealed little besides the depth of corruption and criminality in Bo’s Chongqing:

At the trial, Bogu tried to emphasize that the motivation behind her crime was to protect her son. But these aren’t exculpatory circumstances, nor is there enough evidence to prove her claim.

If the dispute between Bogu and Heywood was economic in nature, they could have used economic channels or a civil lawsuit to resolve it. The fact that Heywood was willing to meet Bogu by himself and drink tea and liquor with her, indicates that Heywood was not on the verge of murdering her son. The dispute had not reached that level. It is obvious that her argument does not add up. In fact, last November as the case was unfolding, Bogu’s son was in the United States studying at Harvard University.

The facts about the disagreement between Bogu and Heywood are hard to come by, but what is known does not excuse her for her crime. The story spun about a mother sacrificing herself for her own can hardly deceive anyone.

Such doubts are widespread, according to Gillian Wong at the Associated Press:

Legal and political scholars say much of the case has been implausible, leaving major questions unanswered, not least of which is whether the victim posed any real threat to Gu’s son at all. Also, why would a high official’s wife carry out such a murder herself? Where is Bo Xilai, the alleged murderer’s husband and man at the center of the messiest scandal in two decades to rock the Chinese leadership?

[…] “It sounds like a story from a fairy tale. The details of the case have very little credibility,” Peking University law professor He Weifang said of the narrative via state media and official comments.

[… The University of Nottingham's Steve] Tsang said he believes that the party leadership has drawn three political parameters around the case: first, that murder by a senior leader’s wife must be punished, though short of execution; second, that Bo Xilai’s case is unlikely to be resolved before the political transition; and third, that Bo Guagua is not to be implicated out of concern that other party leaders’ overseas children might someday be dragged into political affairs back home.

“If you accept that these are the basic political parameters first and the script was subsequently written to make it work, then you see how the script becomes eventually what it looks like and how it can’t actually really be a consistent narrative,” he said.

Publisher Ho Pin listed twelve “important legal problems that were ignored or omitted during the trial” at The New York Times, while The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page catalogued doubts from friends of Heywood and people in the courtroom:

Some observers present at the trial also questioned whether an email presented in court, allegedly from Mr. Heywood, had explicitly threatened to “destroy” Bo Guagua if he did not pay the £13 million, as some media accounts of the trial have suggested.

[…] The precise wording of the alleged email, as well as other details of the proceedings, are hard to pin down because none of the observers in court were permitted to record the proceedings or to take any notes.

[…] There is further confusion over when Ms. Gu and Mr. Heywood first met: Xinhua said 2005, while an unofficial account [referring to Zhao's] of the trial circulating online, most details of which were confirmed by the observers who were present in the courtroom, said the year was 2003.

Several of Mr. Heywood’s friends said both dates were inaccurate and that Mr. Heywood got to know the Bo family in the mid-1990s while living in the northeastern city of Dalian, where Mr. Bo was mayor at the time. They also said he helped make arrangements for Bo Guagua’s education in Britain when he moved there around 2000.

The most colourful conflicting account appeared in The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid: Heywood’s former bodyguard described fending off “kung-fu assassins” sent to end his liaison with Gu in Bournemouth in 2001:

Wright told how in 2001 Heywood was nearly murdered at the couple’s penthouse flat in Keystone House, Bournemouth. Henchmen were sent from China after a “spy” posing as a cook exposed the affair, he says.

“Just before Christmas three Chinese guys turned up at their flat which I was guarding with a team 24 hours a day. One of them was 6ft 3in, powerfully-built and seemed to be in charge.

[…] “Mrs Gu and her son were upstairs along with Heywood, watching the fight.

“It was brutal. Those guys wanted blood. Eventually we got the better of them and they didn’t want the British police turning up so they jumped in a car and sped off.“

A more outlandish objection to the trial is that the woman in the dock was not Gu Kailai at all, but a hired double: “a woman around 46 years-old … from Langfang [a city in Hebei Province] named Zhao Tianyun“. But Gu’s changed appearance may simply and perhaps more plausibly be the result of weight gain, possibly as a side effect of anti-depressant medication.

Amid all the possible plot holes, law scholar Flora Sapio argued at The China Story that the trial should be seen not as narrative but as ritual:

[…] I would suggest that the process that has just taken place under the watchful but circumscribed eye of the Chinese and international media could better be dubbed as a ‘ritualistic ceremony’. That is, it was an orchestrated event sanctifying the consensus regarding Neil Heywood’s death, one that has been used to divine the mysterious workings of power. Of course, every ceremony requires a liturgy, and in the case of the BoGu Kailai trial everyone has dutifully fulfilled their liturgical responsibilities.

[…] The law and due process are not really the point. The moment people agreed to treat this process as a trial, a legal event, they shared unwittingly in the consensus view about Neil Heywood’s murder. The arguments will continue, but each and every one – including the view expressed in this essay – will unfold within the safe, predetermined boundaries of an official scripted liturgical ritual.

The trial of Madam BoGu Kailai has been a complete success.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Guagua, donald clarke, gu kailai, He Weifang, Hu Shuli, legal system, murders, Neil Heywood, trials
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Two men accused of fatally shooting a pair of Chinese graduate students at the University of Southern California were charged on Tuesday with capital murder, making them eligible to face the death penalty if convicted, prosecutors said ….

The men arrested in the case, 20-year-old Bryan Barnes and 19-year-old Javier Bolden, have been charged with capital murder during a suspected robbery. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty or life in prison, both options in a capital case, the district attorney’s office said.

The two will face the charges when they appear in a Los Angeles court later on Tuesday afternoon.

The victims’ parents sued USC last week, accusing the university of making misleading claims about students’ safety. From The Los Angeles Times:

Their attorney, Alan Burton Newman, alleges in the lawsuit that USC inaccurately claimed on its website that it “is ranked among the safest of U.S. universities and colleges, with one of the most comprehensive, proactive campus and community safety programs in the nation.” The suit notes that USC says it provides 24-hour security on campus and in surrounding neighborhoods.

The suit says USC “provided no patrolling” in the neighborhood where the shooting occurred. After the killings, USC persisted with a “clearly misleading” portrayal of safety, reiterating in a letter to the campus community that crime “is low compared to other areas of Los Angeles,” according to the lawsuit.

In response, USC attorney Debra Wong Yang said the university is “deeply saddened by this tragic event, which was a random violent act not representative of the safety of USC or the neighborhoods around campus. While we have deep sympathy for the victims’ families, this lawsuit is baseless and we will move to have it dismissed.”

Stan Abrams, commenting on the case at China Hearsay, agreed, concluding that whatever precautions are taken, “these things just happen.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death penalty, Los Angeles, murders, USC
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Before he was killed, Sunandajie served as the deputy party secretary of Duo county, in the autonomous prefecture of Yushu which is located in the southwest of Qinghai province. From 1992, Sunandajie began to visited the He Hoh Xil area (可可西里) to conduct research and to protect the endangered Tibetan antelopes.

On Jan. 18, 1994, Suonandajie along with four of his team members arrested 20 poachers in the area. However on the return journey, they were attacked. When his body was found, he was frozen in the postion of re-loading his gun.

He later gave his name to the Suonandajie Natural Protection Station established at the source of the Yangtze in 1997 to act as a forward base for anti-poaching efforts.

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Post tags: murders, poaching, qinghai, Tibetan antelopes, wildlife preservation
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Zhang Xihua left most of her relatives in the dark when she suddenly and secretly married Han Junhong, an apartment security guard eight years her younger, and convinced him to quit his job.

Equally mysterious was Zhang’s sudden decision to divorce the father of her two children before running off with Han.

But according to prosecutors, Zhang had at least one confidante who knew in advance why and how she would dump one husband and marry another. She had confided in a distant relative, Communist Party member and textile factory owner named Huang Yucai.

Prosecutors say Huang, 51, not only persuaded Zhang, 46, to divorce and marry Han, but he also convinced her to kill him in the shaft of an illegal coal mine near Beijing as part of an elaborate, but apparently not so unusual, extortion plot.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal mining, murders
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On December 12th, a serious homicide occurred around 4AM in Yinshanpai village (located in Gaoming township, Anhua County, Yiyang City), leaving 6 wooden homes torched, 12 people dead, and 2 seriously injured. Those seriously injured have already been sent to a local hospital for treatment. On December 13th, around 6:50AM, the suspect Liu Aibing was arrested by Public Security Bureau officers.

More details, via AFP:

Liu, a migrant worker, had recently returned from southern China’s Guangdong province where he had sought employment, the Hongwang report said. He has a history of mental illness, it added.

Among the dead were Liu’s father and several close relatives, it said.

The Hunan killings are the latest family-related murders in China in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, police in southwest China captured a man suspected of murdering his parents and four other relatives after he escaped from a mental hospital in Yunnan province.

In late November, police in the southern Hainan province captured a man suspected of hacking to death his parents, wife, sons and sister in Beijing.

From Xinhua: On December 12, several stopped police cars in Hunan Province, Anhua County, Gaoming Township, discover the crime scene of a major homicide.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hunan, murders
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An American relative of a US Olympic coach was killed and another injured in a stabbing attack in Beijing on Saturday, officials said, raising security fears as the Games got into full swing.

A Chinese man stabbed the pair and their Chinese tourist guide as they were visiting the historic Drum Tower monument, a popular tourist site in the centre of the city, the US Olympic Committee (USOC) and Beijing police said.

The assailant, a 47-year-old man from eastern China, then jumped off the second storey of the monument and killed himself, police said in a statement, without giving details as to why he carried out the attack.

Read also: Lifting China from the Wall Street Journal.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: murders, Olympics publicity, Tang Yongming
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Police in central China arrested a man who, possibly suffering mental disorder, killed six villagers and injured one on Saturday.

Zhang Jinfu, 43, a farmer of Xuyang village in Luodian Town, Hubei Province, slashed two old men who were brothers in their 60s,a couple in their 50s and their mother aged 80 or so and a 7-year-old boy named Zhang Tiantian early Saturday morning, with a sickle and a tool with tines on both ends for rice harvest.

The boy’s mother, Xu Lizhen was also injured by Zhang when she tried to rescue her son. Xu has been sent to hospital. Doctors said she had not passed through a danger period.

© Morgan Figuers for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: crime, Hubei, murders, violence
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Xu Fa (徐发), chief of Heilongjiang provincial procuratorate, jumped out of his 9th-floor apartment in 2006, died. He was earlier found to have been involved in an office-selling case and would have been seriously punished.

Zheng Maoqing (ÈÉëËåÇÊ∏Ö), former Hunan province vice-governor, slit his wrists at home in 2006 but survived. While he was in charge of the province’s industry, transportation and work safety, there were many coal mine accidents and transportation corruption scandals. On the day of his attempted suicide, he was summoned by Beijing’s central discipline committee officials for a talk for potential corruption cases.

(...)
Read the rest of List of Officials Who Kill Others or Themselves – Yulun Jiandu (461 words)

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Post tags: corruption, murders, suicides
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