2015-05-12
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Lawyer visits mother of shooting victim Xu Chunhe in hospital, May 11, 2015.
Photo courtesy of lawyer Xie Yang
The mother of a man shot dead by police in China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang has rejected a compensation offer from the government, saying she has hired lawyers to pursue the police officer responsible, media reports said on Tuesday.
Xu Chunhe was killed in a police shooting incident in front of his elderly mother and three young children at a railway station in Heilongjiang’s Suihua city earlier this month, and while a police investigation has claimed he was in the wrong, the authorities have offered the family 200,000 yuan (U.S.$32,198) in compensation.
But Xu’s mother, Qian Yushun, who was placed in an elderly care facility by police following the incident, has hired lawyers to bring the officer who shot her son to justice, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper said.
One of Qian’s lawyers, Xie Yanyi, said the internal police investigation into the shooting was an ambiguous affair.
“It wasn’t made clear whether this case was actually registered, or whether or not it was a criminal investigation,” Xie told RFA on Tuesday.
“There is also crucial information about the facts of the case which isn’t provided.”
Xie said the shooting comes against the political background of a fraud investigation announced on Tuesday into Suihua municipal party secretary Dong Guosheng, which Xie said will have an impact on how Xu’s shooting is handled.
Threat to the public?
Xu, 45, got into a confrontation with an officer in China’s railway police at Suihua’s Qing’an station on May 2.
Police later claimed he was assaulting police and posing obvious threat to public security, Xinhua news agency reported at the time.
“The middle-aged man … forcibly prevented passengers from going through the security inspection gate,” the agency quoted a railway police spokesman as saying.
“When a policeman on patrol tried to stop him, the man picked up a child and threw him at the police. In the chaos, he also tried to grab the policeman’s gun and club,” it said.
Police officer Li Lebin opened fire to keep the passengers safe, but called for emergency medical assistance soon after, Xinhua said.
Excessive force
Rights activist Yu Xinshui said the shooting was an excessive use of force.
“There is nowhere for people to go to redress injustice; all the doors are closed to them,” Yu said.
“They are even detained on the train, but even if they are detained, they shouldn’t be shooting people dead; they could have shot him non-lethally.”
“There was no reason to kill this man outright,” he said.
