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Chinas Answer to a Crime Includes Amateur Sleuths
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING As they awaited their fates in holding cell No. 9 of the Puning County jail, Li Qiaoming and a half-dozen fellow inmates played elude the cat, a Chinese hide-and-seek that might be better described as Marco Polo without the pool.
Mr. Li put on a blindfold, groped for quarry and soon was lying on the floor with a fatal head injury.
That, at least, is the story disseminated by the police in Yunnan Province, where Mr. Li, a 24-year-old farmer, lived and died this month after his arrest on charges of illegal logging.
Public reaction to the official explanation of Mr. Lis death was swift, and cynical. Thousands of Internet users surmised that Mr. Li had died from a beating by the police. Mistreatment of people in custody is not uncommon in China. But what happened next is.
Rather than suppress the accusations by erasing the Web postings, provincial officials invited the public to help solve the case. They sorted through 1,000 volunteers and picked a 15-member committee that would visit the scene of the crime, cull the evidence and discover the truth.
The results ultimately proved dispiriting to those who hoped for a thorough investigation of the police. But the case riveted the public and fueled a frank discussion online and in the state-run media about the extent and the limits of official attempts to shape popular opinion.
In explaining his motives for a citizen investigation, Wu Hao, an official in Yunnans propaganda department, said he was hoping to restore the publics faith in a government that could be unresponsive and at times hostile to accusations of misconduct. In an interview with Chinese reporters this week, he acknowledged that the authorities could have easily quashed the debate by censoring the Internet or could have stonewalled the calls for justice.
Past experience has shown that the doubts of the netizens will not shift or recede on their own over time, he said. Instead, the doubts will actually rise.
His conclusion: A matter of Internet public opinion must be solved by Internet methods.
Although the reaction to Mr. Wus effort was initially favorable, it soured as the limits of the inquiry became apparent. When they arrived at the jail last Friday, the committee members were given access to the crime scene but were not allowed to view surveillance tapes, examine the autopsy report or question the guards on duty at the time.
They were also not permitted to interview the prime suspect, Pu Huayong, an inmate who the police said had been unhappy with the outcome of the elude the cat game. The official police report said he kicked and punched Mr. Li, sending him headlong into a doorframe. Mr. Li died four days later.
But if the authorities thought they could quell public cynicism with newfound openness, they were disappointed. Soon after disclosing the identities of the volunteers, Web users investigated their backgrounds, revealing that nearly all the randomly selected investigators were current or former employees of the state-run media. The team leader, Zhai Li, had previously worked as an Internet commentator, a euphemism for those who seek to shape public debate with pro-government postings.
Over the past week, more than 70,000 postings accumulated on QQ.com, one of Chinas most popular bulletin boards, and many of the comments were less than sympathetic. This kind of hide-and-seek investigation looks like an indignity to justice, read one typical posting.
Even The Beijing News criticized the process as doomed from the start. Weve learned two lessons from this case, it said. One is that such inspections cannot solely rely on passion and idealism but on rational and pragmatic work. The second is that this has again exposed the flaws of the current system and that the need to establish an independent investigation system involving experts is urgent.
In the report they issued on Monday, committee members acknowledged that their inquiry had been hamstrung by officials claiming that it might compromise the police investigation. We suddenly recognized that while netizens may be all powerful on the Internet, they are very much helpless in real life, said Mr. Zhai, the team leader.
On Tuesday, Gong Fei, a provincial official, defended what had become known as the elude the cat episode, saying it represented a new chapter in grass-roots activism. In the future we might still organize this kind of group to get involved in incidents, if allowed by law, he said. We hope the truth of all incidents in the future will be promptly and accurately released so no one has to be left guessing.
His exuberance, however, is apparently not widely shared. A poll sponsored by Sina.com, one of Chinas top Web portals, showed that as of Tuesday, 86 percent of respondents had said they still did not believe the police version of Mr. Lis death.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING As they awaited their fates in holding cell No. 9 of the Puning County jail, Li Qiaoming and a half-dozen fellow inmates played elude the cat, a Chinese hide-and-seek that might be better described as Marco Polo without the pool.
Mr. Li put on a blindfold, groped for quarry and soon was lying on the floor with a fatal head injury.
That, at least, is the story disseminated by the police in Yunnan Province, where Mr. Li, a 24-year-old farmer, lived and died this month after his arrest on charges of illegal logging.
Public reaction to the official explanation of Mr. Lis death was swift, and cynical. Thousands of Internet users surmised that Mr. Li had died from a beating by the police. Mistreatment of people in custody is not uncommon in China. But what happened next is.
Rather than suppress the accusations by erasing the Web postings, provincial officials invited the public to help solve the case. They sorted through 1,000 volunteers and picked a 15-member committee that would visit the scene of the crime, cull the evidence and discover the truth.
The results ultimately proved dispiriting to those who hoped for a thorough investigation of the police. But the case riveted the public and fueled a frank discussion online and in the state-run media about the extent and the limits of official attempts to shape popular opinion.
In explaining his motives for a citizen investigation, Wu Hao, an official in Yunnans propaganda department, said he was hoping to restore the publics faith in a government that could be unresponsive and at times hostile to accusations of misconduct. In an interview with Chinese reporters this week, he acknowledged that the authorities could have easily quashed the debate by censoring the Internet or could have stonewalled the calls for justice.
Past experience has shown that the doubts of the netizens will not shift or recede on their own over time, he said. Instead, the doubts will actually rise.
His conclusion: A matter of Internet public opinion must be solved by Internet methods.
Although the reaction to Mr. Wus effort was initially favorable, it soured as the limits of the inquiry became apparent. When they arrived at the jail last Friday, the committee members were given access to the crime scene but were not allowed to view surveillance tapes, examine the autopsy report or question the guards on duty at the time.
They were also not permitted to interview the prime suspect, Pu Huayong, an inmate who the police said had been unhappy with the outcome of the elude the cat game. The official police report said he kicked and punched Mr. Li, sending him headlong into a doorframe. Mr. Li died four days later.
But if the authorities thought they could quell public cynicism with newfound openness, they were disappointed. Soon after disclosing the identities of the volunteers, Web users investigated their backgrounds, revealing that nearly all the randomly selected investigators were current or former employees of the state-run media. The team leader, Zhai Li, had previously worked as an Internet commentator, a euphemism for those who seek to shape public debate with pro-government postings.
Over the past week, more than 70,000 postings accumulated on QQ.com, one of Chinas most popular bulletin boards, and many of the comments were less than sympathetic. This kind of hide-and-seek investigation looks like an indignity to justice, read one typical posting.
Even The Beijing News criticized the process as doomed from the start. Weve learned two lessons from this case, it said. One is that such inspections cannot solely rely on passion and idealism but on rational and pragmatic work. The second is that this has again exposed the flaws of the current system and that the need to establish an independent investigation system involving experts is urgent.
In the report they issued on Monday, committee members acknowledged that their inquiry had been hamstrung by officials claiming that it might compromise the police investigation. We suddenly recognized that while netizens may be all powerful on the Internet, they are very much helpless in real life, said Mr. Zhai, the team leader.
On Tuesday, Gong Fei, a provincial official, defended what had become known as the elude the cat episode, saying it represented a new chapter in grass-roots activism. In the future we might still organize this kind of group to get involved in incidents, if allowed by law, he said. We hope the truth of all incidents in the future will be promptly and accurately released so no one has to be left guessing.
His exuberance, however, is apparently not widely shared. A poll sponsored by Sina.com, one of Chinas top Web portals, showed that as of Tuesday, 86 percent of respondents had said they still did not believe the police version of Mr. Lis death.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
