Committee to Protect Bloggers » Wei Wenhua http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org Free speech for bloggers worldwide Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:42:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 en Chinese Citizen Journalist Murdered http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2008/01/10/chinese-citizen-journalist-murdered/ http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2008/01/10/chinese-citizen-journalist-murdered/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:27:17 +0000 Curt http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2008/01/10/chinese-citizen-journalist-murdered/ According to the Guardian, (via From the Frontlines), “24 residents of Tianmen, a city in central China’s Hubei province, have been detained after Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a company owned by the local water resources bureau, was pulled out of his car and savagely beaten” by a mob. Wei had filmed a gang fight between the villagers and village officials with his cell phone. The village officials were backed by a number of “chengguan,” a kind of enforcer. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out which kind. It’s unclear whether it were just the chengguan who took 10 minutes to beat the man to death.

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Ray reminds us of a previous case of journalist attack by villagers. This one turned out to be more complicated than at first blush. The situation was different than this, in that it was a possibly inexperienced British reporter. This story was initially covered by Chinese journalists. I had also had an experience related to me personally of a mob attack against a Western journalist by that journalist. So, I don’t know if we can call it a trend, but it’s not an isolated event either.

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