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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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16-year sentence for journalist is upheld
By Jane Chen |
January 6, 2010, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A COURT in north China's Hebei Province has upheld the 16-year jail term for a journalist after convicting him of taking 200,000 yuan (US$29,300) in bribes from a county government to help it conceal a mine accident which had claimed 35 lives.
Li Junqi, director of a Beijing journalist station of the Farmers Daily newspaper, was also convicted of embezzlement, according to the second verdict by Zhangjiakou City Intermediate People's Court, yesterday's southcn.com reported.
A blast occurred at the Lijiawa Mine in Nanliuzhuang Town of Zhangjiakou's Weixian County on July 14, 2008, killing 35 miners and costing 19 million yuan.
To discourage media reports of the scandal, mine owners and the county government decided to offer money to journalists to have them not to report on the accident.
Learning Li had visited the mine trying to report on the accident, the county's vice publicity minister Gao Zhanjun went to Beijing and asked Li not to report it anymore. Li agreed but asked Gao to subscribe to around 3,000 copies of his newspaper in return.
Finally, the county government sent 200,000 yuan to Li's newspaper's account as a promotion fee, the court said.
But the court said the account was an ordinary bank account of the newspaper rather than its public account, so that it ruled Li has personally exacted the money.
Li's lawyer Zhou Ze strongly challenged the verdict, stressing the 200,000 yuan was transferred to the newspaper's account and that Li never had a chance to employ it as his own.
Li Junqi, director of a Beijing journalist station of the Farmers Daily newspaper, was also convicted of embezzlement, according to the second verdict by Zhangjiakou City Intermediate People's Court, yesterday's southcn.com reported.
A blast occurred at the Lijiawa Mine in Nanliuzhuang Town of Zhangjiakou's Weixian County on July 14, 2008, killing 35 miners and costing 19 million yuan.
To discourage media reports of the scandal, mine owners and the county government decided to offer money to journalists to have them not to report on the accident.
Learning Li had visited the mine trying to report on the accident, the county's vice publicity minister Gao Zhanjun went to Beijing and asked Li not to report it anymore. Li agreed but asked Gao to subscribe to around 3,000 copies of his newspaper in return.
Finally, the county government sent 200,000 yuan to Li's newspaper's account as a promotion fee, the court said.
But the court said the account was an ordinary bank account of the newspaper rather than its public account, so that it ruled Li has personally exacted the money.
Li's lawyer Zhou Ze strongly challenged the verdict, stressing the 200,000 yuan was transferred to the newspaper's account and that Li never had a chance to employ it as his own.
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