Word: zhigang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last April, China's Southern Metropolis Daily printed a story about Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker in Guangzhou beaten to death in official custody after being detained by police for not carrying ID. The story touched off a wave of public outrage that reached Beijing: in June, Premier Wen Jiabao led a Cabinet vote that proscribed the detention of migrants simply for straying far from their hometowns. The next morning, the paper editorialized: "This is a milestone in the history of citizens' rights that we should cherish forever...
...paper were sentenced to hefty jail terms on charges of corruption. (The prosecution said the two had embezzled company money. Their defense attorney asserts that the payments were standard performance-based bonuses.) In an open letter to authorities last week, Chen Feng, the Daily reporter who broke the Sun Zhigang story, wrote that such a crackdown, if politically inspired, could mean a big step backward for China's media. "The will of authorities," he wrote, "will be the black cloud that cages and smothers journalism...
...LAID TO REST. SUN ZHIGANG, migrant graphic designer whose beating death in March by fellow inmates and attendants in a vagrants detention center in Shenzhen led to the reform of China's strict residency laws; in his hometown of Huanggang, Hubei province, China. Although Sun had the requisite residency papers for Shenzhen, the 27-year-old wasn't carrying them when he was stopped by police for a random check. His death created an uproar in China, and in June, President Hu Jintao signed an executive order forbidding police from detaining migrants simply for lacking the proper identification...
...ended differently, Sun Zhigang's life might have been a testament to his country's progress. The 27-year-old carpenter's son had worked his way out of a remote village in China's central Hubei province to a university in the provincial capital of Wuhan. He graduated with an arts degree, then later moved to Guangzhou, landing a job as a graphic designer and the chance to make a home in new China's glittering boomtown. But three weeks into his new life, Sun's luck ran out. On his way to an Internet caf?, he was stopped...