{"id":34891,"date":"2013-07-21T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=34891 "},"modified":"2013-07-21T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T15:30:00","slug":"34891-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=34891","title":{"rendered":"China officials held over watermelon-seller death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Local residents demonstrate with a banner saying “urban enforcers (chengguan) killed people” in Linwu county, central China’s Hunan province, 17 July 2013<\/div>
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Local residents demonstrated with a banner saying ‘urban enforcers kill people’<\/div>
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Six urban security personnel have been detained by police investigating the death of a fruit seller in southern China, state media say.<\/div>
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Deng Zhengjia, in his 50s, died on Wednesday in Chenzhou City, Hunan.<\/div>
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He was hit with a weight from a set of scales after a row erupted with the officials, known as “chengguan”, Xinhua reported, citing Mr Deng’s niece.<\/div>
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The six are being held on suspicion of intentionally harming others, added the news agency.<\/div>
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Urban law enforcers tasked with enforcing ”non-criminal administrative regulations” such as traffic, environment and sanitation rules<\/div>
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Chengguan operate separately from the police<\/div>
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They are employed by the Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureaux of their individual cities<\/div>
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Critics call them “violent government thugs”<\/div>
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Reports that a disabled street vendor was beaten to death by chengguan in 2011 sparked riots in China’s Guizhou province<\/div>
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There are thousands of chengguan in at least 656 cities across China, Human Rights Watch says<\/div>
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The chengguan, or Urban Management Law Enforcement force, support the police in tackling low-level crime in cities and have become unpopular with the Chinese public after a series of high-profile violent incidents.<\/div>
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“They are now synonymous for many Chinese citizens with physical violence, illegal detention and theft,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report last year.<\/div>
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The row in Linwu county, Chenzhou, erupted after Mr Deng, 56, and his wife tried to sell home-grown watermelons at a scenic riverside spot without a licence, the county government said in a statement.<\/div>
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Having asked the couple to leave, “the enforcers temporarily confiscated four of the watermelons, requesting that the couple sell their melons in an authorised location instead”.<\/div>
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The couple began “insulting” the officers when they encountered them again 50 minutes later, the statement said.<\/div>
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“The enforcers tried to reason with the couple, the dispute between the two sides became a physical conflict, and in the process Deng Zhengjia suddenly collapsed and died,” it added.<\/div>
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There were anti-chengguan protests in Linwu on Wednesday, and the fruit seller’s death has also sparked outrage on China’s microblogs.<\/div>
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In July 2011, the death of a disabled street vendor who was reportedly beaten by local law enforcers sparked a riot in Guizhou province.<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>the<\/span><\/a> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>original article<\/a><\/a><\/a>.<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/strong>
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<div>Deng Zhengjia, in his 50s, died on Wednesday in Chenzhou City, Hunan. He was hit with a weight from a set of scales after a row erupted with the officials, known as "chengguan", Xinhua reported, citing Mr Deng's niece.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}