BEIJING — The death of a well-educated environmentalist after plainclothes officers detained him outside a Beijing foot massage parlor last Saturday is rattling nerves in China and causing its growing middle class to wonder: How safe are we from our own police?
A deluge of articles, online comments and petitions for justice suggests that many suspect that unjustified police violence was at fault in the death of the environmentalist, Lei Yang, 29, who, according to Chinese news media, held a master’s degree in environmental science from the prestigious Renmin University and worked for the China Association of Circular Economy, an environmental organization affiliated with the government.
Mix in speculation about what Mr. Lei, whose wife gave birth to the couple’s first child in April, was doing at the time — “foot massage parlor” is a common euphemism for a brothel — and his death has attracted huge attention.
This comment on Weibo summed up many people’s views that the police had acted improperly and that any recording devices that might have offered evidence contradicting their version of events had conveniently gone missing:
“Lei Yang is dead. I don’t care what his job was, or what his political views were,” a user identified as Shazi Laoqi wrote. The commenter added, “I just care that he’s dead, and that he died while being detained. And all the things that are supposed to aid police during the process of detention were missing — they didn’t bring their recording equipment, mobile phones that recorded it were damaged, close circuit cameras in the area were all broken.”
On Wednesday, People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, appeared to push back against suspicions of police brutality by publishing a rare, detailed interview with the police officer in charge of what the police said was an antiprostitution raid in Changping, a northern district of Beijing, where Mr. Lei was reportedly picked up shortly after 9 p.m. on Saturday.
The police had not used excessive force during the arrest, Xing Yongrui, the police officer in charge of the case, told People’s Daily. Mr. Xing told the newspaper that Mr. Lei had paid 200 renminbi, about $30, for sex, and that after he was detained had bitten officers and tried to escape twice. He said it took five officers 20 minutes to subdue Mr. Lei with their bare hands.
The police said that Mr. Lei had a heart attack while in custody and was brought to a hospital where he was declared dead, according to multiple reports in the news media. Family members said they saw bruises on Mr. Lei’s arms and head, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. It quoted the police as saying this was a result of Mr. Lei hitting his head on the ground after trying to escape from a police car.
A headline in Global Times, which is owned by People’s Daily, suggested that winning public trust over the case would be an uphill battle. “Police struggle to convince public of proper conduct of investigation over man’s death,” it read.
The case has overtones of a scandal in 2003, when Sun Zhigang, a recent college graduate who had arrived in Guangzhou for a job as a designer in a garment factory, was beaten to death in police custody in Guangdong Province after being detained for not having a valid residence card. His death set off nationwide outrage and led to the revision of regulations controlling the movement of migrant workers.
Demands for answers as to how Mr. Lei died continued to mount on Thursday, with four strongly worded petitions, said to be from different groups of alumni from Renmin University, circulating on social media. Some links were being deleted by censors.
The authenticity of the petitions could not be independently confirmed, but Beijing News said it had confirmed one, reportedly written by graduates from the class of 1988.
The petition was titled: “We Must Speak Out — Statement by Some 1988 Alumni of Renmin University of China on Fellow Student Lei Yang’s Death.”
It demanded greater rights for Chinese citizens and justice for Mr. Lei, whose family has requested an independent autopsy. The results will take about a month, news reports said.
Here are translated excerpts from the petition, which appeared on a Baidu website on Thursday but was deleted later in the day:
“We are outraged by the Changping police’s assortment of hypocritical and evasive rhetoric!
“Looking over the entire episode of Lei Yang’s homicide, it looks more like a malicious act of randomly targeting ordinary people or middle-class urbanites than an accident. And such malicious acts could be happening everyday, without notice.
“Whether or not Lei Yang visited a prostitute (what one can do with just 200 renminbi at a massage parlor?), he was not involved in any criminal offense. Even if he had moral shortcomings, like the rest of us, he didn’t deserve to die. Even if he was unhappy with the way he was being handled and might have obstructed official business, he should not have been executed on the spot without a trial!
“As senior fellow students of Lei Yang, we have been working hard for many years amid the waves of reform and opening-up. Most of our fellow alumni can be found in various specialty areas like Lei Yang, but they dare not call themselves the elite of society. We painfully feel that today, more than 30 years after the reform and opening-up, our personal safety and civil rights have not been guaranteed.
“At a time when citizens are routinely confronted with a wide range of lawlessness such as demolitions and the kidnapping of children, it is difficult for them to be guaranteed their personal safety from the police. The relationship between public security departments and citizens is extremely abnormal.
“So, the death of Lei Yang was by no means an accident. It was a tragedy arising from the system. We call on the top authorities to conduct an independent and impartial investigation into Lei Yang’s death. We demand that his killers be severely punished and that discipline within the public security departments be corrected. We want our most basic rights to personal safety, civil rights and urban order.”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/world/asia/china-lei-yang-police-death.html?ref=asia
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