Shenzhen's public humiliation of sex workers provokes a backlash
SHANGHAI: For people who saw the event on television, the scene was a chilling flashback from 30 years ago: Social outcasts and supposed criminals, in this case prostitutes and a few pimps, were paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then taken to jail without trial.
The act of public shaming was intended as the inaugural event in a two- month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution. Chinese law enforcement often works on the basis of campaigns, and for its organizers the idea of marching 100 or so prostitutes, all dressed in identical yellow smocks, before the cameras must have seemed like a clever way of launching a battle against the sex trade.
What the authorities in Shenzhen, an industrial boomtown adjacent to Hong Kong seem not to have counted on was an angry nationwide backlash against their tactics, with many people around China joining in a common cause with the prostitutes over the violation of their human rights and expressing their outrage at the incident in one online forum after another.
So-called rectification campaigns like these were everyday occurrences during the Cultural Revolution, which officially ended in 1976. Popular justice was meted out and class enemies were publicly beaten, forced to make confessions and sent to work camps for re- education. That the practice saw a revival last week in Shenzhen, the birthplace of China's economic reforms and one of its richest and most open cities, seems to have added to peoples' shock.
"Even people who commit crimes deserve dignity," one person wrote on the popular Internet forum 163.com. "Must we go back to the era of the Cultural Revolution?"
"Isn't this a brutal violation of human rights?" asked another poster, who likened the parading to an act out of the Middle Ages. "Shenzhen's image has been deeply shamed."
The incident has also reportedly elicited concerns from the All-China Women's Federation, a state affiliated body, which is said to have addressed a letter to the Public Security Ministry in Beijing.
Meanwhile, at least one lawyer has stepped forward to defend the prostitutes, citing legal reforms in 1988 that banned acts of public chastisement.
"With the development of human civilization and law, this kind of barbaric punishment with its strong element of vengeance has been abandoned," wrote Yao Jianguo, a Shanghai lawyer in a public letter addressed to the National People's Congress, China's legislature. Then, paraphrasing a letter by William Pitt during a debate over the excise tax in Britain in 1763, he wrote:
"Wind may come in, rain may come in, but the King may not, which is to say that even a poor person living in a slum has his own inviolable rights."
While voices condemning the behavior of the city and its police were the most energetic, some spoke up in support of the crackdown.
"Perhaps you've never been to Shenzhen, or you've been there and you don't have a thorough understanding of the place," wrote one contributor to an Internet forum. "A person who really knows Shenzhen would feel that this is not harsh enough, because the prostitution industry has become so prosperous there."
The parading of the arrested prostitutes in Shenzhen came after a provincial television station broadcast a report about prostitution in the city's Futian district, where sex is openly traded, both by streetwalkers and pimps and in bath houses and karaoke clubs. The news report was followed by a nationally broadcast segment about the district, which appears to have shamed the local authorities into initiating the campaign.
In recent years, the Internet has served as an important barometer of the public mood in China, and increasingly it functions as an outlet for criticism, as well. In this light, some commentators said the online reactions reflect a real evolution in public opinion. Show trials and shaming thrived from a spirit of conformity, and even in the recent past, they said, few would have stepped forward to defend prostitutes.
"For a long time there was only one voice on a subject like this, prostitution," said Zhu Dake, a cultural critic at Tongji University in Shanghai. "People have broken into camps and are willing to overturn the traditional morality in favor of a more universal notion of human rights. The fact that people came out defending these women shows a real maturity."
Instead of jumping on the bandwagon against prostitution, which is illegal but omnipresent in China, many commentators aimed their criticisms instead at the government for its lack of sustained action against the rich underworld that operates the sex trade, and the focus of law enforcement on prostitutes rather than their customers.
"Looming in the background of this case is the fact that the sex trade emerged along with China's reforms themselves," said Li Jian, a prominent Beijing human rights activist who has called for organized action to defend the arrested women.
"If you say that prostitution is illegal, there is an administrative backdrop to the issue. To punish the prostitutes in such a crude manner is a way of avoiding responsibility on the part of the administration and the police."
A poster on one Internet forum put it more plainly. "They only dare go after mosquitoes, but they are frightened of the tigers."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/08/ ... php?page=2