Chinese municipal inspectors beat blogger to death

A couple of sources in the (Western) media are starting to pick up the story of Wei Wenhua, a blogger who was beaten to death in central China. Municipal inspectors—a sort of minor league city-level police force—were engaged in a confrontation with villagers over government waste-dumping in the vicinity. The confrontation turned violent, with inspectors beating villagers. Wei took out his mobile phone to use its camera to take pictures of the confrontation, whereupon fifty inspectors descended on him, beat him for five minutes, and rendered him unconscious. He was taken to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.

CNN is reporting that twenty-four inspectors were detained and over a hundred others are under investigation, but it seems clear that even this swift response, obviously designed by the Chinese government to try to prevent civil unrest, is not having the desired effect. People around the world, but especially in Internet-restricted China, are using the Internet to express their outrage:

After the Web site sina.com published news of Wei’s beating, readers promptly expressed their outrage. In one day alone, more than 8,000 posted comments. Bloggers inside and outside China bluntly condemned the brutal killing.

“City inspectors are worse than the mafia,” wrote one Chinese blogger. “They are violent civil servants acting in the name of law enforcement.”

Another blogger asked, “Just who gave these city inspectors such absurd powers?”

It’s not exactly news that the Chinese government has an awful record when it comes to free speech on the internet, or an equally awful record on police and government treatment of its own citizens. The perspective article linked to above contains several examples of criticism from various ranks of people in China: from academics to bloggers to regular old folks, there seems to be a significant amount of resentment at this scandal. It won’t be a catalyst, and this event won’t be a significant trigger, for large-scale changes in governmental policy. But hopefully Wei Wenhua won’t be forgotten, and his cause will be taken up and championed by people both in China and in the rest of the world.