A group of high school students in the southeast Chinese province of Guangdong were attacked by metal pipe-wielding thugs after villagers attempted to detain the grandson of a high-ranking local official.
The villagers said Li Fuyu, the grandson of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference standing committee member Li Kesheng, was involved in indecent behavior with a schoolgirl, residents and local officials told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.
After Li Fuyu and three companions were caught in the act of sexually assaulting a female student on June 8, villagers apprehended them and took them to the local village Party committee, according to RFA. Once there, Li’s father took Li away, “as if nothing had happened,” according to RFA.
And after that incident, Li’s people took revenge on the high-school students, villagers say.
“More than 20 people were injured, and several of them had serious injuries and are still in the hospital,” an employee at Haojiang No.2 High School in the city of Shantou was quoted as saying. The students were watching an educational film when the attack took place on June 10, two days after the previous altercation.
“They didn’t say a word, but just started beating people with water pipes,” the worker said, adding that the identity of the thugs is unknown. “The government said, ‘That’s just the way it is,’ and that we shouldn’t make a fuss,” the employee said.
But the attack drew widespread condemnation from local villagers, with hundreds taking to the streets to protest and file a complaint against local police. They allege that local police have obfuscated their attempts in seeking justice against the assailants.
“The students were watching a film organized by the school, and they were beaten up by unidentified men,” a local resident, who was not named, told RFA. “After the parents heard about it, they went to the city government but they were prevented from getting through by the police.”
Another resident named Chen said Li Fuyu had abused his power in the past.
“He had done so much in the past, too, like joyriding in the village, stealing people’s cell phones, and harassing female students who were just getting out of school,” the resident said.
There have been reports of Chinese Communist Party officials or their relatives raping or sexually abusing women in the past.
Zhou Yan, a 17-year-old girl, was burned and her face was disfigured in February by Tao Rukun, a young man who is the son of a communist party official. Tao attacked her after she rejected his advances and he sought revenge, with the incident becoming one of the most talked-about stories on China’s Internet at the time.
In a notable example in 2009, 21-year-old waitress Deng Yujiao stabbed a local official in Badong town who was allegedly trying to rape her.
And in 2006, Gao Yingying, a hotel waitress in the Hubei province city of Laohekou, was raped and murdered, and her body was cremated without autopsy. At the time, locals believed the perpetrator was a relative of the Laohekou Communist Party secretary.
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