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Police car goes nowhere as crowd responds to chengguan violence. (Posted by a Chinese blogger to Internet forum)
Around 10,000 residents of Qianxi, Guizhou Province, became enraged after chengguan, China’s street cops, attacked a woman in broad daylight. They burnt squad cars, raided government buildings, and prompted the authorities to send in paramilitary forces to restore order.
An anonymous Qianxi resident described the scene: “We are afraid to go outside. I heard the clamor of police and fire truck sirens outside. I was on the phone with a relative who lives next to the police station. He said there were more than 10,000 people there and that several police cars had been flipped over and burned.”
An eyewitness said that, on the evening of Aug. 11, several chengguan confiscated a couple’s electric scooter at the intersection of Shawo road and Yanshan road in Qianxi. The two parties started to quarrel. One of the chengguan began using violence, which angered the nearby crowd. The crowd swelled, from several thousand to over 10,000.
Using violence to resolve disputes is part of the chengguan’s official training, though the training documents counsel discrete infliction of pain, rather than public displays of brutality.
Regular police later arrived, but the outraged crowds flipped over the police car and set it on fire. The crowd was lashing out at anyone in a uniform, so police didn’t approach.
Other witnesses related how, when a county chief arrived at the scene, he was immediately beaten by the mob. A reporter tried to call the Qianxi police department, but the phone was never answered.
As of 3 a.m. on Aug. 12, the Urban Construction Bureau, traffic police division and police department buildings had been attacked and nearly 30 police cars burned.
Later on Aug. 12, the crowds started to disperse; there were over 2,000 paramilitary police on the streets. By Aug. 13 the situation had normalized.
Accounts online indicate that residents of Qianxi hold deep grudges against the chengguan, allowing a small spark of violence from one of the officers to lead to a conflagration of popular unrest.
In Anshun, Guizhou Province recently, another mass riot was triggered by a chengguan who strangled or beat to death a one-legged fruit vendor. Previous to that a 20-year-old pregnant migrant worker was reportedly beaten to death by chengguan in Guangdong, also sparking a large riot.
Read the original Chinese article.
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