Following the announcement last week of Bo Xilai’s appeal against a life sentence for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, South China Morning Post’s Patrick Boehler reports calls for justice for victims of Bo’s Strike Black anti-crime campaign in Chongqing:
Xu Mingxuan, a legal practitioner who has long criticised Bo’s legacy, called on Chongqing’s municipal government to bring justice for those prosecuted during Bo’s publicised “dahei”, or “fight organised crime”, campaign in a commentary for the Beijing News on Sunday.
More than 3,300 people have been detained in the campaign which lasted from 2007 until Bo’s downfall early last year, according to municipal statistics. Many were tortured. The city’s longtime police chief Wen Qiang became the campaign’s highest-profile target in 2009. He, along with 12 other purported triad leaders, was executed.
[…] “The problems left over from the dahei campaign will not naturally disappear,” wrote Xu in the article. “Don’t let the people lose faith in the law over some anxieties.” [Source]
At Blocked On Weibo, Jason Ng notes that Sina Weibo searches for “Bo” and “dahei” are blocked as of Monday. “Searching for 大黑 or 薄 on its own is ok,” he writes, “but if you have both words in your search query, it will be blocked.”
See more on torture and other abuses in Bo’s Chongqing, which lawyer Li Zhuang described as “like a crazy mouse on a rollercoaster going to a slippery slide,” and on the subsequent scrubbing of Bo’s legacy, via CDT.
