By Kalsang Rinchen
Dharamsala, May 23 – Various incidents of brutality by police and law enforcement officials on public including students are occurring in China days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the infamous Tiananmen massacre.
A clash between students of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and officers from the urban management corps of Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu province, broke out leading to what was described by many as “the city’s largest university unrest in years.”
The officers, were notorious for their brutality and harsh treatment of poor and unregistered street vendors, said China Daily which further added that the officers allegedly attacked a group of students who set up sidewalk stalls in the city’s Jiangning district on Monday.
Thousands of outraged students from the took to the streets and cut off traffic for nearly five hours, the China Daily reported.
The students held placards with slogans in both Chinese and English claiming to protest through Gandhian “nonviolent noncooperation”, and used cellphone cameras to take photos which were uploaded and widely circulated across online forums.
The photos showed students approach dozens of traffic and riot police with signs reading “help vulnerable social groups and construct a harmonious society” – a vow of the central government since 2004.
However, Nanjing police denied the allegations against police and said no one was beaten or verbally abused.
Meanwhile in a separate incident, three traffic police assistants have been reportedly sacked after they sparked a mass protest Baiyin city, Gansu province, by around a thousand people who took to the streets, pelted stones at police officers, according to China Daily.
The traffic police officers’ beating of a 21 year old cyclist led to the clash between civilians and the police, reported China Daily
Citing an eyewitness, the China News Net reported that the traffic police and their assistants “pulled Zhang Bing off his bike and beat him until blood was all over his face.”
The Baiyin government’s version of the incident says that Zhang is a jobless 21-year-old who “agitated the crowd by jumping onto a police car, claiming to be a student who had been beaten by the officers”.
As a crowd of up to 1,000 gathered and more police arrived, a confrontation between protesters and police broke out. Ten officers and government officials were injured by brick-throwing protestors, the government said.
