Stuff about Shanghai cop killer Yang Jia （杨佳）

Some interesting statements during the court proceedings:

　杨佳当庭直言：我是无罪的，是他们违法，有罪的是他们。（指警察，发人深思啊）
[Yang Jia: I am innocent, is they who are guilty of breaking the law.]

　法官问：你有什么补充意见？杨佳说：“这些警察之所以敢这样，都是因为他们的背后有你们”。
[Judge asks: do you have any thing to add to your statement? Yang Jia: “the reason the police dare to act the way they do is because
you guys stand behind them.”]

　法庭最后陈述，杨佳说：“被这样的警察管理着的国家，一个遵纪守法二十几年的公民最后都会被判刑坐牢。” （说出了绝大多数民众的心里话）

杨佳最著名语录：你不给我一个说法，我就给你一个说法。

[Closing statement. Yang Jia says: “a country run by policemen such as this will force someone who has been law-abiding for twenty some years to end up going to jail.” The blogger says: (these are the true feelings of the overwhelming majority of people).

Yang Jia’s most famous quote: If you don’t give me an explanation, I will give you one.]

Elsewhere, citizen blogger and journalist Zola reposts a general letter calling for amnesty for Yang. The letter states a few reasons for this, beginning with some general reasons (the world is generally moving away from capital punishment, even some war criminals were pardoned in China) and then moving to some specific issues relating to how the case was handled (judicial mishandling, interference). Zola states what most others have said about this case: that the tragedy of Yang is that he was an ordinary fellow that was driven to homicidal rage by the pigs. Left with no legal recourse, stymied by a system that was patently designed to thwart demands like his, he had no other choice but to exact his revenge in blood. This open letter was signed by the following people:

中华人民共和国公民：（按签名顺序排，第一批签名人员名单）

艾未未（北京艺术家）、茅于轼（北京经济学家）、杜光（北京离休人员）、于浩成（北京法学家）、戴晴（北京学者）、张祖桦（北京学者）、王俊秀（北京学者）、古川（北京编辑）、陈永苗（北京律师）、李苏滨（北京律师）、江天勇（北京律师）、黎雄兵（北京律师）、唐吉田（北京律师）、杨凤春（北京学者）、王治晶（北京自由撰稿人）、夏业良（北京学者）、冉云飞（四川编辑）、廖亦武（四川作家）、张博树（北京法学家）、萧默（北京学者）、刘序盾（北京学者）、李智英（北京学者）、李槟（南京教师）、孙岩力（北京教师）、王卫星（北京记者）、谭洪安（北京编辑）、于赤阳（黑龙江公民）、张辉（山西民主人士）、贾瑞明（河北农民）、谢军（深圳设计）、王靖禹（旅英学者）、华乔（上海摄影师）、释妙觉慈智（广东法师）、林树坤（瑞士出版人）、范冲（北京学生）、张志强（北京打工之友）、李勉之（深圳工程师）、曹王澜（广东民工）、张赞宁（江苏教师)、龚光云(广东学者)、郭玉闪（北京学者）、周曙光（楚国人）、淮生（北京自由职业者）、马萧（北京记者）

2008年10月20日

YOu can see that Ai Weiwei (Mr. I hate my bird nest and the fake Olympics) among many other scholars, writers, and intellectuals from around the country. There was only one person from Shanghai that signed it, and that was photographer Hua Qiao.

The story has gathered some steam and AFP and a bunch of other western media sources are running this story, noting that there were protests in Shanghai outside the courtroom where Yang’s trial was held:

Huang Xuemin, a grey-haired protester, complained police beat her when she tried to enter the court premises.

“You see how police were treating us, and you could imagine how badly Yang Jia must be treated,” she said, showing the assembled crowd scratches on her forearms that she said were from her scuffle with police.

Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are vast amounts of debates going on online … personally, I just want to know the truth about what happened to the guy. I want there to be an investigation into whether or not he was mistreated by the police. I think that’s what most of his supporters want. As to whether or not he should die–well, he did kill a lot of people, and I don’t think there is any justification even if you were insulted or beaten or otherwise felt your dignity to have suffered as a results of other people’s actions. That said, I am *almost* categorically against the death penalty, because I feel uneasy with the idea of the state arrogating to itself to mete out this kind of brutal punishment.

Oh well. Yang Jia will face the firing squad, a dead chicken for all the rebellious monkeys lurking in the underbelly of Chinese society. And for those that support or otherwise sympathize for Yang, that will just prove what they’ve been saying all along.

Technorati Tags: yang jia, 杨佳, crime, shanghai, murder, police, expression china, chinese, media, newspaper, reporters, journalist, government, corruption

Movies I’m Watching: X Files: I want to believe

I was never a huge fan of the X-files series but I was quite looking forward to this movie ever since I first saw the previews when at a movie theater in Paris. I just got the DVD in Shanghai and watched it just now. What can I say? Like the blogger at Apropos of Something I thought it was almost underwhelming its fairly mundane plot, which was gruesome but not nearly as government conspiracy/alien abductions heavy as one might have expected. And the movie did dispense with the whole mythology, which was nice. Like many others, I have my own theory of why the X-files theme song played when a picture of George W. Bush and J. Edgar Hoover appeared: because the FBI and government are all in cahoots with the aliens. Chris Carter might be insinuating that Bush is an alien himself.

It was strange, how unambiguous in certain regards was their relationship in the movie. They are sleeping together, cuddling, kissing. The dialogue was ok for the most part. None of the acting was really standout; everyone did their part and discharged their duties with the usual competence–nothing exceptional there. The plot moves but doesn’t quite twist and turn, it’s all fairly straight forward, the pacing and tension is simply created by the unfolding of certain events or the slow accumulation of clues, making it a fairly linear detective story.

Woman with 6 paralyzed/disabled relatives kills her own daughter

In Shaanxi province: a woman named Li Chenghui was living with six disabled people. The article title in Chinese might be misleading because it implies that they are all mentally disabled. However, it seems that Li’s parents are both mutes (her father was severely injured in an accident, but not necessarily mentally disabled), and her husband’s parents are both mentally disabled. The couple had two daughters, the second of which, born in 2002, was also disabled. A further blow to the already impoverished family came when Li’s brother was involved in a work-related accident and was paralyzed from the waist down, causing his pregnant wife to leave him and go back to her hometown. It was under these circumstances that Li did the unthinkable (and unconscionable): feed her own daughter some kind of pesticide/poison. The girl kept vomiting and they took her to the local village clinic, but her situation worsened. They called 120 for the ambulance but the girl, unfortunately, died shortly after the ambulance arrived.

The article comes from the Blue Cross Psychological Aid website (in Chinese) which I had previously visited when reading about the psychological aid efforts in post-earthquake Sichuan. Looks like this is a website worth keeping track of…if you don’t mind occasionally reading depression-inducing news.

Only in China do you do autopsies in front of the house of the deceased…

Li Shufen, the girl whose mysterious and contested death was the cause of the Weng’an incident of June 28, has had yet another autopsy performed on her corpse, this time in front of her house where naturally, as is the case in China, it became a spectator event with people from around the village coming to take a gander. The issue with her death, and what sparked the anger that caused the mass violence on June 28, was the allegation that Li was raped and murdered, rather than suicidal, as eye-witnesses contend. The official story is still that she jumped off a bridge, into the river, and while her friends attempted to save her, they failed and she died. In previous autopsies they’d claimed that no evidence of sexual intercourse was discovered, thus discounting the rape aspect of the story. The results have not been released to the family yet.

Autopsies seem to me, to be pretty grim. They must have strong stomachs down there. Especially to see it done on someone that you knew, a family no less. Ugh.