MCLC: man jailed for CR killing

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Jacqueline winter (dujuan99 at gmail.com)
Subject: man jailed for CR killing
***********************************************************

Source: South China Morning Post (4/4/13):
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1206213/jail-rare-china-cultural-rev
olution-murder-case
 

Man in his eighties jailed for Cultural Revolution killing
By Agence France-Presse in Beijing

A mainland court has jailed an elderly man for a murder committed during
the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, officials said yesterday,
after a trial that sparked anger over seemingly selective justice.

Qiu Riren, who is in his eighties, was on Friday condemned to
three-and-a-half years in jail for the 1967 killing, said a court official
in Ruian, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, declining to give further
details.

Reports said Qiu had been arrested in July. But it was unclear why his
case went ahead several decades after the Cultural Revolution, a violent
and chaotic period that the government has sought to move beyond without
releasing a full historical account.

Qiu had belonged to an "armed group" and strangled his victim - a doctor
thought to be a spy - before cutting off his legs and burying him, the
state-run China News Service reported.

Mainland social media users decried the trial when state media announced
it in February, pointing out that senior officials who stirred up the
social and political upheaval had never been held accountable.

Then-leader Mao Zedong had urged ordinary people to struggle against the
privileged, resulting in attacks on officials, intellectuals and others.

Neighbours and family members turned on one another, while young people
formed "red guard" units that engaged in mass violence and destroyed
cultural relics.

The authorities have never publicly estimated how many died during the
Cultural Revolution, but British historian Roderick MacFarquhar has
estimated half a million deaths in 1967.