A legal case in Hubei Province of a karaoke bar waitress charged with stabbing to death a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official believed to be sexually assaulting her has posed an unprecedented challenge for the Chinese authorities amidst public demands for justice.
Sympathy for the waitress has grown nationwide as the state has issued conflicting accounts of what happened and, according to bloggers, tried to rig a cover up. The public’s anger draws upon outrage not only at the CCP;s pervasive corruption, but in particular at a growing number of rapes of young women by Party officials.
In response to the growing public outcry, China’s state authorities decided 11 days after the incident to rein in the media’s coverage of the case, referred to as “May 10” by Hubei’s Public Security office.
According to a Radio Free Asia report, a reporter in China said that a memo issued last Friday afternoon (China time) by Hubei’s Propaganda Department complained about the media hype around the case and told the province’s media “not to send people to interview, hype, or report.”
China’s State Council Information Office issued a similar notice the same afternoon to all of the country’s news Web sites demanding their “cooling off” about the case.
Changing Stories
Public support for the waitress gained momentum largely as a reaction against the changing official accounts of what happened. Many believe that the CCP is keeping away from them a story of serious sexual assault committed by its members.
On May 10, three officials of the town Yesanguan in the Badong county, Hubei province, went into a karaoke-spa shop after supper. According to a May 12 statement released by Badong’s public security office, the three men, named Deng Guida, Deng Zhongjia and Huang Dezhi, got into a row with a 21-year-old waitress named Deng Yujiao because of a “language barrier.”
