Internet critic vows to zip his mouth
- Source: Global Times
- [01:48 March 11 2010]
- Comments
By Zou Le
A Hubei Province man vowed Wednesday he would never again publicly criticize the local government, shortly after he was jailed for eight days, over his Internet postings about extravagant spending.
Cheng Yonggang, 39, an unemployed contractor from Yunxi county in Shiyan, told the Global times Wednesday, five days after he was released, that he intends to monitor the government but will do so quietly.
"I will not turn to the Internet anymore," Chen said, adding that he will continue to supervise the government in the future but in a less public way including "writing letters directly to authorities."
Earlier this year, the county government unveiled a plan to build an ecological and tourism zone for more than 1 billion yuan ($160 million), according to the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald.
As a native resident, Chen said that the government's big budget item captured his attention.
He subsequently posted several articles on the forum bbs. sycatv.net, questioning the necessity of such an extravagant project.
Those posts questioned the reality of such spending and whether it would help poor people in the "poverty stricken" county to spend so much.
The county was listed as one of the nation's most disadvantaged counties. Its government revenue was 120 million yuan ($17 million) in 2009, according to the local government's website.
The local police went to visit him in downtown Shiyan and detained him for "defamation."
An announcement posted on the same forum by the Yunxi police bureau said, "Under the username 0.36, Chen had fabricated facts and uploaded photos to publicly insult and defame other people, the behavior has constituted the crime of defamation."
However, the post did not specify who Chen defamed or insulted.
Chen once named and criticized the county's Party chief for organizing a pageant to pick a beautiful female "image ambassador" to serve as the spokeswomen for local projects.
After his release, Chen said he was forced to write another post under the same registered username acknowledging that his detention "was legitimate and he had violated the law."
However, Wang Qiming, a local police officer in charge of the case, denied in a phone interview with the Global Times that the police "forced" him to apologize.
Chen's detention was under the spotlight and after the media reported the case, a more senior police department reviewed Chen's case.
The Shiyan city police bureau published a notice on its website two days ago urging the Yunxi police bureau to "apologize to Chen, compensate him and penalize those responsible."
"The apology is to appease the public, it's not a personal apology to me," Chen said.
