MCLC: unequal in life and death

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: unequal in life and death
***********************************************************

Xia Junfeng was executed today. His execution was a hot issue on the
Internet today and aroused a good deal of anger with the government.

Paul

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Source: China Real Time, WSJ (9/25/13):
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/09/25/unequal-in-life-and-death/

Unequal in Life and Death
By James T. Areddy

Chinese cyberspace Wednesday was popping with a basic question: What’s
different about a kebab vendor named Xia Junfeng and Gu Kailai, the wife
of once-powerful Chinese politician Bo Xilai and the daughter of a
celebrated revolutionary?

Mainly: Mr. Xia is dead, executed on Wednesday, while Ms. Gu remains alive
in prison.

Though Ms. Gu hails from China’s elite and Mr. Xia from the nation’s
masses of laobaixing, both are murderers, according to Chinese courts.
Each expressed remorse and cited self-defense to explain their graven
acts. And in both cases, courts ruled that death is the appropriate
penalty.

But to many on the Internet in China, their differences came into starker
view on Wednesday when Mr. Xia’s wife began writing chilling messages that
suggested the end was near for her husband.

“Early this morning, the court sent people to take me to meet Xia Junfeng
for the last time,” his wife, Zhang Jing wrote
<http://weibo.com/shenyangzhangjing> on Sina Corp.’s Weibo micro-blog
service. “I’m going crazy. Getting ready to go.”

Hours later, by mid-morning, Chinese authorities confirmed
<http://e.weibo.com/2833285031/Ab3Xcv5BY> that Mr. Xia was dead.

Mr. Xia’s sentencing for intentional homicide was handed down in November
2009 by Shenyang Intermediate People’s Court and later upheld by the
Supreme People’s Court, despite widespread views in China that he had been
denied justice.

The news comes amid renewed attention to a murder at the center of the
government’s case against the downed Mr. Bo, who was sentenced to life in
prison Sunday for corruption and abuse of power. He had acted illegally,
as Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing, in handling a finding that his
wife in late 2011 had killed a British associate, Neil Heywood. Ms. Gu had
argued she feared reprisals, perhaps aimed at her family, from Mr. Heywood
over a dispute.

Mr. Xia’s case appears to resonate widely in China because so few believe
Ms. Gu, who 13 months ago was told of her death sentence, will actually
face execution for her crime. Hers was a suspended death sentence, meaning
it could be commuted to life in prison.

“Gu Kailai also killed a person, right?” wrote Tian You
<http://weibo.com/u/1567642010>, a pseudonym for a user on Sina Corp.’s
Weibo microblog service.  “How come she didn’t get death sentence? Why
death for Xia Junfeng?”

The unspoken assumption: class background.

Mr. Xia has won waves of sympathy in China following news in May 2009 that
he killed two urban security officials. The officials, known as chengguan
(城管), are an unsympathetic lot in China with a reputation for often
heavy-handed enforcement of city ordinances. Mr. Xia apparently argued
that he killed the two defending his meat stand, and himself.

When Chinese Internet users threw their sympathy behind Mr. Xia in droves,
political analysts drew parallels with what many see as the spark that
ignited the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East: the December 2010
self-immolation of Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in response to
harassment by local authorities. Again Wednesday, the Internet was
exploding with sympathy for Mr. Xia.

Online appeals 
<http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/1784436.shtml> by the
Chinese meat seller’s wife, Ms. Zhang, on his behalf had already gotten
widespread notice by ordinary people and human-rights groups. “Can they so
savagely beat us at will?” Ms. Zhang wrote earlier of the chengguan,
arguing that evidence was suppressed that might have saved her husband.

Early Wednesday, the condemned man’s name “Xia Junfeng” was the
most-searched word on Sina’s Weibo service. One post from a noted writer,
Zheng Yuanjie, had been reposted more than 94,000 times. Others traded
paintings  
<http://weibo.com/p/1005052131428627/album?from=page_100505&mod=TAB#place>
apparently done by Mr. Xia’s 13-year-old son and a book of them had been
compiled for sale, with proceeds promised for the family.

Some messages of sympathy were quickly being removed from the service.

Renmin University Professor Zhang Ming, who had started an online
petition, apparently had his account deleted. “I cry for him every day
‘Please spare his life!’ We remember [what happened to the trials] of Gu
Kailai and and Liu Zhijun,” read one of his messages that other users
reposted, which also referred to the former Railway Minister who was
handed a suspended death sentence for corruption in July.

In dramatic language, Ms. Zhang continued to draw attention to her
husband, who was in his 30s. “I’m back,” she wrote, after visiting him.
“My mother-in-law is distraught. She’s crying. What should I do?”

She criticized court officials, saying they made her husband suffer during
his final moments by denying his request to be photographed in a last
message to his son. “Xia Junfeng begged them to take a picture for our
family but they said no,” said Ms. Zhang. “Why are you so cruel, why?”

– James T. Areddy with contributions from Liyan Qi and Fanfan Wang; Follow
James on Twitter @jamestareddy <http://twitter.com/jamestareddy>