MCLC: Guizhou journalist held

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Guizhou journalist held
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (11/23/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/asia/china-journalist-who-reported-
childrens-deaths-held.html?ref=world

China Holds Ex-Journalist Who Wrote of Boys’ Deaths
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — A former journalist and his wife have been detained by security
officers in China after he wrote online last week about five boys in
Guizhou Province who died in a trash bin after taking shelter there from
the cold, according to a lawyer and a friend of the ex-journalist.

The lawyer, Li Fangping, said in a telephone interview that the
ex-journalist, Li Yuanlong, who is not related to the lawyer, was picked
up by security officers on Wednesday. The men spoke by telephone while Mr.
Li was being driven along a highway to a “resort” in Guizhou in
south-central China, the lawyer said Thursday. A friend of Mr. Li’s who
edits an online publication said Mr. Li’s wife had been taken too.

Mr. Li, 52, had been a reporter for Bijie Daily, the main newspaper in the
city of Bijie, for eight years, but was imprisoned in 2005 for two years
because he had written too many “negative” stories about Bijie, the lawyer
said. He has been unemployed since his release from prison, the lawyer
added.

Late last week, Mr. Li posted photographs and wrote about the deaths in
Bijie of the five boys, who were all related and ranged in age from 9 to
13. The bodies were discovered on Nov. 16 in a rolling trash bin. The
local police said the boys appeared to have died of carbon monoxide
poisoning after they started a fire with charcoal inside the bin to warm
themselves. At least four of the boys had dropped out of school, according
to official news reports.

Mr. Li’s posts ignited outrage on the Internet in China. Online users
asked scathing questions about how the local government, teachers, family
members and society in general could have allowed the boys to end up in
such a predicament. Official news organizations, including Xinhua, the
state news agency, ran reports on the deaths.

For many Chinese, the plight of the dead children evoked comparisons to
the tale of “The Little Match Girl
<http://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/981/>,” a Hans
Christian Andersen story of a girl ignored by the rich who froze to death
after trying to warm herself with a lighted match. The story was commonly
assigned in Chinese schools for many years.

The boys’ parents were migrant workers who had gone off to boom cities
seeking jobs, and the boys were being raised in haphazard conditions
typical of “left-behind children,” the news reports said. It is common
across China for migrant workers to leave children in the care of family
members, often grandparents, in their hometowns. Because of a strict
residency registration system across China, migrant workers cannot get
proper social benefits in the cities in which they work, and their
children are often barred from schooling, which gives parents little
incentive to bring their children with them.

The lawyer said local officials knew that Mr. Li had more information on
the plight of children in Bijie, and so the officials wanted to detain him
to keep him away from other reporters. He added that Mr. Li had been
documenting the problems faced by children for years.

A person answering the telephone at an office of the Bijie government said
the office had no information about Mr. Li. The Web site of the city
government has some information on the five dead boys and has a post
vowing to protect children and to patrol trash bins. The government also
said it would set up a hot line for reporting on cases of street children
and send officials to schools to ensure that children are enrolled and
attending classes.

Mr. Li’s posts last week came at a particularly delicate time for the
Communist Party, which announced a new leadership lineup on Nov. 15. Party
leaders have stressed the need to bridge the country’s growing income gap,
but many officials still support a growth-at-all-costs strategy.

Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that two school principals and
four local officials were fired Monday night for failing to ensure the
welfare of the boys in Bijie. Two other officials were suspended from
their jobs.

The boys were identified as Tao Zhongjing, 12; Tao Zhonghong, 11; Tao
Zhonglin, 13; Tao Chong, 12; and Tao Bo, 9.
Mia Li contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 23, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled
the name of the author of “The Little Match Girl.” He is Hans Christian
Andersen, not Anderson.