2 officials suspended for taking insensitive photos with petitioner
Print Edition
Two government officials in Hunan Province who were photographed smiling and making “V” signs beside a cancer-stricken petitioner have been suspended, the local publicity department said yesterday.
Li Guilin, official with the Linli County Bureau of Letters and Calls, and Huang Yufang, community worker in Anfu Town were suspended pending a further investigation, it said.
They were criticized for taking photos with Duan Xinde, who has sought justice for years after he was assaulted over a contract dispute.
The three pictures went viral on the Internet and triggered wide controversy, including criticism of the officials for a lack of empathy, Beijing News reported yesterday.
Duan said he asked his wife to take the pictures as evidence because local petitioning officials continued “insulting” him.
The director of the Bureau of Letters and Calls in Linli, Pang Yewen, appeared in a different photo taken in August, the report said. It shows Duan sitting on the roadside, wearing a white cloth with the word “yuan,” which means injustice. Pang was standing behind Duan and fanning him.
Beijing News said the other two photos were taken on November 18. One showed Duan looking uncomfortable. Pang’s subordinate Li and community official Huang were standing on either side of Duan while grinning and posing with the V gesture, the newspaper said.
Duan reportedly said they were trying to prevent him from filing a petition after a July 2010 incident in which he was assaulted by an official from Linli Tap Water Company over a contract dispute. He was hospitalized after the attack but the company refused to cover his medical bills and the attacker was never punished, the report said.
Every time he tried to file a petition he was intercepted by officials, the report said.
The photos were first uploaded on an forum edited by Li Gen. Duan had told Li he hoped to safeguard his rights via the Internet, according to the newspaper.
Pang confirmed all three photos were genuine, the report added.
Pang said he had criticized the other two officials, but insisted they simply felt happy because they knew Duan was getting healthier. As for him fanning Duan, he told the newspaper he just wanted Duan to feel cooler because it was hot that day.
Duan, however, wasn’t convinced. “From the look on my face in the photos, do you think I am happy?” he was cited as saying.
The decades-old petitioning system has long been criticized as ineffective.
Local officials often try to prevent petitioners from going to the capital by detaining them in illegal “black jails.” Governments are ranked in annual assessments on the number of petitions filed in Beijing.
Li Gao, deputy head with the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, said on November 28 the central government will no longer use the ranking system.
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