{"id":5210,"date":"2015-06-01T22:18:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T02:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=5210"},"modified":"2015-06-01T22:18:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T02:18:47","slug":"police-detain-wu-gan-chinese-activist-known-as-super-vulgar-butcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/police-detain-wu-gan-chinese-activist-known-as-super-vulgar-butcher","title":{"rendered":"Police Detain Wu Gan, Chinese Activist Known as \u2018Super Vulgar Butcher\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cn-01police-articleLarge\"<\/a>By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW June 01, 2015<\/p>\n

The Chinese police have detained Wu Gan, a burly rights activist with a signature bald head and black beard, who supporters say skillfully merges cyberspace and real-life protests but whom authorities have painted in a barrage of articles and reports on state-run television as a morally degenerate troublemaker from a bad family.<\/p>\n

The ferocity of attacks in news reports from People\u2019s Daily, the official news agency Xinhua, CCTV and the Public Security Bureau newspaper after the detention last week of Mr. Wu, 42, surprised even seasoned observers. They likened the reports to a political campaign, and interpreted them as a sign the Communist Party is focusing its attention on a new kind of activist: socially popular individuals with no particular organization, platform or network behind them. Such criticism had previously been directed at high-profile individuals like the imprisoned political activist Liu Xiaobo or the artist Ai Weiwei, but rarely at people operating at the grass-roots level, who command support in China but are little known outside the country.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wu\u2019s online handle is \u201cSuper Vulgar Butcher,\u201d a term that mocks the officials that Mr. Wu says he wants to \u201cslay\u201d for their corruption and misconduct, his lawyer, Ge Wenxiu, said by telephone from Guangzhou. Mr. Wu \u201chas a sense of humor,\u201d Mr. Ge said, and parodies the officials\u2019 vulgarity.The police initially detained Mr. Wu, a native of Fujian Province, on May 20 for \u201cdisturbing order in a work place\u201d and \u201cinsulting people\u201d outside the High People\u2019s Court in Nanchang, in Jiangxi Province. He had traveled there to support lawyers demonstrating to gain access to the court papers of an old and controversial case they wanted to reopen.<\/p>\n

Video on CCTV appeared to show Mr. Wu exiting from a taxi and immediately joining the demonstration, shouting and hanging up posters on the court gates. The police arrived at the scene and Mr. Wu was later taken into custody.<\/p>\n

A week later, the charges against Mr. Wu were changed to the more serious \u201cpicking quarrels and provoking troubles\u201d and \u201cslander.\u201d The first charge is a catchall phrase that the police have used against numerous rights activists in recent years.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wu has been moved to a detention center in Fujian, Mr. Ge said.<\/p>\n

One prominent case that Mr. Wu helped to publicize recently was the death by shooting of Xu Chunhe, 45, in a railroad station in Qing\u2019an, in Heilongjiang Province, by a police officer.<\/p>\n

The reports, many of which ran on the front pages of newspapers or appeared in the main national news broadcasts, quoted neighbors or acquaintances of Mr. Wu\u2019s as saying that he came from a troubled family. Flouting social conventions, his father moved to his mother\u2019s house when they married. In China, the woman usually moves to the man\u2019s home. \u201cWherever there was trouble, he is on to it like a fly chasing stink, making the most of a mess, afraid that the world was at peace,\u201d said one man who gave his name as Mr. Chen.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wu specialized in \u201ccat and mouse\u201d tactics and in \u201cdiverting attention then striking,\u201d the reports said, and he had unfairly criticized numerous officials. The reports also accused Mr. Wu of smearing the reputation of a deceased police \u201chero,\u201d and criticized him for his divorce.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wu, a native of Xiashi village who served in the military and was a former security guard at Xiamen Airlines, \u201cwrote a crude novel\u201d and \u201cwas never serious at work.\u201d His father \u201cdestroyed a chicken farm\u201d \u2014 a crime for which he was sentenced to three years in prison, and a fourth year was added for escaping \u2014 the reports said.<\/p>\n

Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Wu\u2019s lauded him as a courageous rights activist who dared to stand up to officials despite not having an organization behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is very direct, helpful and forceful,\u201d Wen Yunchao, an activist who goes by the name Bei Feng, said from New York. \u201cHe does have a side to him where he can be pretty crude in his language,\u201d Mr. Wen said in a WeChat message.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The Butcher\u2019 (Wu Gan) is a legend,\u201d Xiang Xiaokai wrote in a message circulated widely on social media. \u201cUnder the dark yoke of tyranny, where protecting rights meets everywhere with difficulty, despair is everywhere. But The Butcher again and again used concrete cases to show that in this boundless dark, on a micro level, it\u2019s all just a big pile of lowlife behavior,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The state news media reports were aimed at \u201cdemonizing\u201d Mr. Wu, said a politics professor at Peking University, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the risks that come with speaking out publicly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Wu is a link from the cyberworld to the real physical world,\u201d the professor said. \u201cHe is a really smart user of technology and a cutting-edge figure for getting money, attention and support for cases. But he\u2019s also really successful at \u2018being there.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he is at the nexus of the cyberworld and the physical world, the combination of the two is something the government fears most,\u201d the professor added. \u201cThis explains why the government was so anxious to smash him with all its media.\u201d
\nFor detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW June 01, 2015 The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[249,1264],"views":5100,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5212,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions\/5212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}