[Late last week, Mr. Li posted photographs and wrote about the deaths in Bijie of the five boys, who were all related and ranged in age from 9 to 13. The bodies were discovered on Nov. 16 in a rolling trash bin. The local police said the boys appeared to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning after they started a fire with charcoal inside the bin to warm themselves. At least four of the boys had dropped out of school, according to official news reports.]
By Edward Wong
 |
Li Yuanlong/Associated Press
The trash bin in Guizhou Province where five boys sought shelter and diedfrom the cold on Nov. 16. |
BEIJING —
A former journalist and his wife have been detained by security officers in China after
he wrote online last week about five boys in Guizhou Province who died in a
trash bin after taking shelter there from the cold, according to a lawyer and a
friend of the ex-journalist.
The lawyer, Li Fangping,
said in a telephone interview that the ex-journalist, Li Yuanlong, who is not
related to the lawyer, was picked up by security officers on Wednesday. The men
spoke by telephone while Mr. Li was being driven along a highway to a “resort”
in Guizhou in south-central China, the lawyer said on Thursday. A friend of Mr.
Li who edits an online publication said Mr. Li’s wife had been taken too.
Mr. Li, 52, had been a
reporter for Bijie Daily, the main newspaper in the city of Bijie, for eight
years, but was imprisoned in 2005 for two years because he had written too many
“negative” stories about Bijie, the lawyer said. He has been unemployed since
his release from prison, the lawyer added.
Late last week, Mr. Li
posted photographs and wrote about the deaths in Bijie of the five boys, who
were all related and ranged in age from 9 to 13. The bodies were discovered on
Nov. 16 in a rolling trash bin. The local police said the boys appeared to have
died of carbon monoxide poisoning after they started a fire with charcoal
inside the bin to warm themselves. At least four of the boys had dropped out of
school, according to official news reports.
Mr. Li’s postings
ignited outrage on the Internet in China. Online users asked scathing questions
about how the local government, teachers, family members and society in general
could have allowed the boys to end up in such a predicament. Official news
organizations, including Xinhua, the state news agency, ran reports on the
deaths.
For many Chinese, the
plight of the dead children evoked comparisons to the tale of the “Little Match Girl,”
a Hans Christian Anderson story of a girl ignored by the rich who froze to
death after trying to warm herself with a lit match. The story was commonly
assigned in Chinese schools for many years.
The boys’ parents were
migrant workers who had gone off to boom cities seeking jobs, and the boys were
being raised in haphazard conditions typical of “left-behind children,” the
news reports said. It is common across China for migrant workers to leave
children in the care of family members, often grandparents, in their hometowns.
Because of a strict residency registration system across China, migrant workers
cannot get proper social benefits in the cities in which they work, and their
children are often barred from schooling, which gives parents little incentive
to bring their children with them.
The lawyer said local
officials knew that Mr. Li has more information on the plight of children in
Bijie, and so the officials wanted to detain him to keep him away from other
reporters. He added that Mr. Li had been documenting the problems faced by
children for years.
A person answering the
telephone at an office of the Bijie government said the office had no
information about Mr. Li. The Web site of the city government has some
information on the five dead boys and has a post vowing to protect children and
to patrol trash bins. The government also said it would set up a hot line for
reporting on cases of street children and send officials to schools to ensure
that children are enrolled and attending classes.
Mr. Li’s postings last
week came at a particularly delicate time for the Communist Party, which
announced a new leadership lineup on Nov. 15. Party leaders have stressed the
need to bridge the country’s growing income gap, but many officials still
support a growth-at-all-costs strategy.
Xinhua, the state news
agency, reported that two school principals and four local officials were fired
Monday night for failing to ensure the welfare of the boys in Bijie. Two other
officials were suspended from their jobs.
The boys were identified
as Tao Zhongjing, 12; Tao Zhonghong, 11; Tao Zhonglin, 13; Tao Chong, 12; and
Tao Bo, 9.
Mia Li contributed research.
[Twenty minutes after the argument, Mr. Khan said, the former tenant returned, with a friend and a gun. He shot at the women, who were having dinner in their home, killing Binno. Mr. Javed has not been seen since, said Mr. Khan and several neighbors on Friday.]
By Raksha Kumar
 |
Courtesy of Raksha Kumar
A photograph of Binno, who was killed by a former neighbor, when she
and her mother objected to his urinating in front of their house.
|
On Wednesday, Mr.
Khan's wife, Sadmani, and daughter Binno were chatting with a neighbor in their
house in the Nizamuddin slum, when they heard a commotion outside, Mr. Khan
said in an interview Friday in his home.
Mrs. Khan peeped
outside and saw a former tenant who went by one name, Javed, relieving himself
on the stairs. "He was drunk stiff," said Mr. Khan.
Mrs. Khan asked Mr.
Javed to not urinate in front of her house, and the two got into an argument,
which ended with Mr. Javed threatening to return to kill her, Mr. Khan said.
Twenty minutes after
the argument, Mr. Khan said, the former tenant returned, with a friend and a
gun. He shot at the women, who were having dinner in their home, killing Binno.
Mr. Javed has not been seen since, said Mr. Khan and several neighbors on
Friday.
Men urinate in public
with abandon in New Delhi, relieving themselves beside highways, on schoolyard
walls and onto well-trod sidewalks.
Nizamuddin residents
said the entire neighborhood was terrified. "If it can happen to Sadmani baaji (sister),
it can happen to any of us," said a neighbor, who asked to remain
anonymous, adding that she has a daughter as old as Binno.
One of Binno's
classmates, who also lives in Nizamuddin, said, "Her family was nice, she
was nice."
Mr. Javed, a longtime
resident of the neighborhood, lived upstairs from the Khans for several months
and was evicted from their property after not paying the rent, neighbors said,
and so held a grudge against the family.
He was released from
Tihar jail just three months ago after serving a three-year term for attempted
murder, Ajay Chaudhary, a Delhi police commissioner, said in a statement to
Indo-Asian News Service.
Mr. Javed's former
neighbors said he comes from a troubled family, and that the Khans took care of
his mother, who lived alone, while he was in jail.
The Nizamuddin slum is
a densely populated settlement that has spread across 13 acres of land in South
Delhi, with 15,000 residents and a transient population of at least 10,000
more, according to a survey conducted by the Aga Khan Trust earlier this year.
It nestles against some of the most expensive real estate in Delhi, including
the Nizamuddin East neighborhood, where homes sell for the equivalent of
millions of dollars.
