Human Rights Watch - Censorship - China

Censorship in China

Southern Metropolis Daily Article on the Case of Sun Zhigang

On April 25, 2003, Guangzhou’s daily Southern Metropolis Daily, renowned for its hard-hitting investigative journalism, broke the story of the death of Sun Zhigang. Sun, a young fashion designer, had traveled to Guangzhou to seek employment and wound up dead a month later in police custody (“Designer Beaten to Death by Police”). The news article began with the following timeline:

March 17th—Sun was stopped in the street on his way to an internet cafe by Guangzhou police and taken to a police station.

March 18th—Sun was transferred to a detention center for migrant laborers.

March 18th—Sun was transferred to a medical center in the detention facility.

March 20th—Sun was pronounced dead by staff of the medical center.

April 18th—An autopsy indicated that Sun was brutally beaten 72 hours before his death.

According to this news report, Sun was stopped on his way to an internet cafe by local police who asked him to show his identity card and temporary living permit. The temporary living permit (or zanzhuzheng) was a document then required for visiting workers from other provinces. Sun had forgotten to bring his identity card with him, and had not yet obtained a permit. As was then common practice, Guangzhou police took Sun to the local police station. Sun called his roommate, Cheng, from the police station on a mobile phone and asked Cheng to bring money for bail and Sun’s identity card. Cheng did so, but was told by police that Sun could not be released on bail—most likely, Cheng learned, because “Sun had ‘talked back’ during his interrogation.”

The following day, Sun was transferred to a migrant detention center. Again, he called friends and asked for help. Sun’s supervisor went to the detention center to attempt to get Sun released on bail. However, he “was told to come back the following day, because staff were about to go off duty.” Later that day, Sun’s friends called the detention center again and learned that Sun had been transferred to the medical clinic within the detention center. Again, Sun’s roommate Cheng tried to visit Sun in the clinic, but was turned away by staff who said that only family members could visit. On March 20th, Sun’s friends called the clinic and learned that Sun had died of, reportedly, a heart attack. According to the article, “Sun’s previous medical history had shown no sign of heart problems.”

Sun’s family and friends requested an autopsy of his body at Zhongshan University. The reporters observe,

“The autopsy center of Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University delivered a report on April 18th, indicating that Sun had died in shock and that he had been heavily beaten on the back and many other places on the body. Evidence of heavy hemorrhaging was found in the back and the muscles on his sides. A doctor who wished to remain anonymous told the reporter that Sun must have been beaten several times, for the hemorrhage was very unusual and serious.

Doctors from Zhongshan University were all stunned by the brutality. One of the doctors said that Sun was not only beaten on the back and buttocks, but that his knees were also burned. All the facts clearly showed that Sun was beaten to death.”

Reporters from Southern Metropolitan Daily who requested an interview with the relevant police station were refused. The article notes, “Before Sun left the detention center for the clinic, the police asked him to sign his name on a document. Sun wrote, ‘Satisfied! Thank you! Thank you!’ ”

Sun’s father, who lives in a rural area of Hubei province, expressed regret to Southern Metropolitan Daily reporters that he had gone to great lengths to get a university education for his son. “If he hadn’t gone to university, he wouldn’t have been so bookish as to argue about his rights, and he wouldn’t have been killed,” he said.

The original news article circulated widely through the Internet, and the resulting public pressure led the Beijing government to turn migrant detention centers into voluntary service centers and abolish the temporary residence permit requirement. In March 2004, two administrative staff at the paper were given long prison sentences for corruption, and the editor of the paper was arrested—a campaign many journalists and editors in China believe to be retaliation by powerful local government officials for the newspaper’s investigative journalism.