Reopening the Wengan Case

Chinese police reopen investigation into girl’s death after huge protests

Police defend riot measures in SW China protests

The Chinese government has announced that they are reopening the case of the girl that died of a supposed suicide in Wengan. From The Guardian:

It quoted a vice-chief of the county, Xiao Song, as saying a preliminary investigation had found no links to relatives of local officials. He said the provincial government had sent 10 criminal investigators and forensic experts to reinvestigate the death.

Chances are pretty good, if the Chinese government continues to follow their standard procedure for containing crisis, that these investigators will spend a long time looking at the body before coming out with a result. The reason for this is to wait for people to stop feeling to passionate about the issue and for people to move on to their daily lives. Then, they’ll issue some inconclusive vague statement about how she might or might not have been raped and murdered or they will arrest some young hoodlum and put all the blame on him. Behind the scenes, the local officials will be punished slightly to let them know that the central government is dissatisfied with what happened. The people will bitch and moan about the results for a little bit before doing the Olympic cheer as they watch Liu Xiang and ping pong on TV.

As the China Daily stated:

The provincial Communist Party chief Shi Zongyuan on Monday called for local authorities to handle the incident properly. “We must put maintaining social harmony and stability on the top of our agenda,” he said.

‘Social harmony and stability’ are the most important issues. There is no mention of finding the truth. The investigators sent to Guizhou were not there to find out what really happened. I mean if the autopsy does show that the schoolgirl was raped and killed, that those who did it were relatives of the local officials, and that the uncle of the girl was beaten to death and found under the house of a Guizhou official, the entire country would be in an uproar. More cases of corruption around the country will pop up, people will be angry at the government for being corrupt and immoral, and there will be more demonstrations.

Yesterday’s edition of the province’s official paper, the Guizhou Daily, had reported that the family were “too emotionally unstable” to accept the results of the “careful investigation according to the law”.

And for once, the Guizhou Daily is correct. Even if the autopsy truly found the case to be a suicide, there is no way the family will accept it. Because the local government screwed up in their handling of the issue and because of all the censorship that’s taking place on the internet, the official line has lost legitimacy. There will be no truth to be found from the investigation and the people are no longer demanding the truth. The Wengan incident has reached the point where there is no longer any chance of solving it through a simple autopsy.

Instead, everything will be clamped down until the flames die down and people forget. And oh how quickly do people forget.