Detained Chinese blogger seeks redress
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E-mail Xinhua, June 29, 2012
A Chinese blogger on Friday brought to court a case seeking to redress his one-year detention after mocking a city's top officials' alleged interference in due judicial procedure in a high-profile anti-crime campaign.
Fang Hong, a forestry department employee in southwestern China's municipality of Chongqing, was sent to a Re-education Through Labor Center, a police-run extra-judicial detention facility, for one year on April 28, 2011, for "inciting social disturbances," according to the police record. He was released on April 24 this year.
Fang said he was apprehended after posting a joke on a microblog criticizing Chongqing's former top official Bo Xilai and former police chief Wang Lijun's meddling in the case against Li Zhuang, a controversial lawyer defending suspects in mafia-related cases in Chongqing's crackdown on organized crime.
"Boqilai makes a dump, and asks Wang Lijun to eat it. Wang passes the dump to prosecutors who forward it to the court. The court passes it again to Li Zhuang. Li's lawyer says he is not hungry and whoever made the dump should eat it," Fang wrote, using "Boqilai," which means "erection," as a play on the name of Bo Xilai.
In the trial at Chongqing Third Intermediate Court, Fang said the right to free speech is protected by the Constitution and, according to the law, his comments on the microblog should not have landed him in the labor camp.
Fang demanded that the detention decision be overturned and that Chongqing's Re-education Through Labor Center Committee, which is under the public security bureau, issue a public apology.
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