By Zhou Meihua
Epoch Times Staff Jun 2, 2009
Deng Yujiao (Internet)
The legal case that has grabbed the attention of ordinary people throughout China, in which on May 10 a waitress in China’s Hubei province allegedly killed a Communist official who she said was involved in a sexual assault on her, took a surprising turn last Sunday as the Chinese authorities described the killing in what might appear to be an exculpatory manner. Legal experts, though, say the charges against her remain unchanged.
The announcement, many believe, stems from the regime’s effort to appease the public during the run-up to the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4 and occurs at the same time as measures meant to silence discussion of this explosive topic.
According to a Xinhua news release of last Sunday, on May 10 the waitress Deng Yujiao at a karaoke-spa center, “was coerced by Huang Dezhi and Deng Guida to bathe with them.” When she refused, it was said, “she was violently pulled and pushed around [by the two officials] and was also verbally assaulted.”
Under such circumstances, says the news release, the waitress’s stabbing of the two officials, which killed one and injured the other, is considered by the police “excessive self-defense.”
According to bloggers, the decision is widely seen as the Chinese authority’s attempt to alleviate the widespread anger among the people, who believe that the authority is trying to cover up a rape or attempted rape by communist officials.
Another Version
The Sunday news release offers yet another official description of what happened in the incident, in addition to three different earlier versions of the story.
Earlier, the waitress reportedly was asked by the official Huang Dezhi to provide “special service” (meaning sexual service), which was then changed to “bathing service” (a young woman giving a man a bath). Last Sunday’s version says she was coerced to “bathe with them.”
Besides, the waitress, instead of being “held down [on a sofa]” or “pushed to sit [on a sofa],” as the earlier versions said, is now said to be violently pulled and pushed around while being verbally assaulted.
No rape or attempted rape is implicated in the Xinhua statement.
The news release also says that Huang Dezhi, vice-director of the Investment Office of the town Yesanguan, has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and stripped of all his offices because he breached Party rules through accepting his client’s dinner invitation and through forcing a waitress to bathe with him.
In addition, the third official, Deng Zhongjia, who earlier had been left out of the picture by the authorities because “he did nothing illegal,” is said to have been fired from his job for the “bad influence he may have in society.”
Reporting Denied
The May 10 case was initially widely reported in the Chinese media, and there was a strong, sympathetic response in the public for the waitress, who was called by some an “heroine” for her act of resistance.
The Chinese authorities have recently used different means to keep the public, including the media, from pursuing any information about the case.
On May 22, China’s State Council Information Office told all the media in China to “cool off” their coverage of the case. Since then, while no reporter has succeeded in contacting the relatives of the waitress, the waitress’s hometown Yesanguan has basically been inaccessible to outsiders.
According to a May 29 report on Sound of Hope Radio, two human right activists who arrived in Yesanguan on May 25 found that the town was under martial law with all the stores ordered to close by the police. One of them, Zhou Li, said they were tailed by the police, who later told them to leave.
“[The police] also told us to leave, saying that they were concerned about our safety; they also said that the Tu, Qiang, and Miao ethnic groups there were barbaric people. I think it’s really not good for them to say something like that,” Zhou said in the recording.
Her friend Wang Haizhen was heard saying, “Because we wanted to go out, they [the [police] made things up to accuse us of causing trouble, this and that…They forced upon us all the labels available.”
The media have reportedly been driven away in the same way, and at least two reporters were physically assaulted.
The two reporters, one female, one male, were from The Beijing News and Nanfang People’s Magazine. They were beaten on May 28 by 5-6 unidentified men upon interviewing the waitress’s grandparents, according to a May 29 China National Radio report.
The men who assaulted them, the report says, took away the reporters’ note books, deleted the contents in their cameras and digital recorders, and the male reporter was made to sign an agreement promising not to do reporting in the town again without official permission.
The two Beijing lawyers who volunteered to defend Deng Yujiao have also left the town. The termination of their contract with Deng Yujiao’s mother was announced on May 23 first by the Hubei authorities, causing many to believe that Deng’s mother was being controlled by public security.
The authorities then announced who Deng’s new lawyers would be.
Around the same time, the authorities also announced that the underwear Deng wore on May 10 had been washed by her mother, which, if true, very likely eliminates forensic evidence important to her defense.
Intentional Killing
Regarding last Sunday’s official statement about the May 10 case, legal experts in China warn that the charge brought against the waitress has not been changed.
Zhu Mingyong and Pu Zhiqiang, two lawyers in Beijing, have separately pointed out through bloc postings that there is no such thing as “excessive self-defense” in China’s Criminal Law, and that the criminal charge against Deng Yujiao is still “intentional killing.”
Deng, then, is still at risk of the harsh penalties in China’s penal code, including capital punishment.
In addition, the claim made by the authorities immediately after the incident that Deng has mental illness—a claim that Deng’s former lawyers deny—has not been retracted by the authorities, according to Pu Zhiqiang.
Hardly any of China’s bloggers seems to believe that the waitress, as the authorities have claimed, was not sexually assaulted on May 10 by the officials. If the bloggers are an accurate guide to Chinese public opinion, then, as the number of conflicting official accounts of the incident grows, the Chinese people are becoming more and more disappointed with the communist regime.
Last Updated
Jun 3, 2009
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