On the evening of May 11, a large number of people appealed for the truth in front of the Forty-Ninth High School. (Video screenshot composite)
In a new development in the case of the student who fell from a building in Chengdu’s Forty-Ninth High School, the Chengdu police announced on May 13 that the student’s body had been cremated with the parents’ signed consent, after the official Chinese media exclusively released a surveillance video of the student before he fell.
However, a series of official information operations and speech controls have raised more questions, with Cheng Yizhong, a veteran media figure from the Southern newspaper industry, saying that Chinese society is collectively avoiding a key issue.
Local police: “From this video you can see him cutting his wrists, the time lasted about ten minutes …….”
On the fourth day after the death of sixteen-year-old Chengdu 49 middle school student Lin Weiqi, the official Chinese Communist Party media CCTV 13 to live “exclusive disclosure of Chengdu 49 middle school Lin fell to his death surveillance video.
The CCTV reporter and the local police officer asked and answered questions, restoring the 33 minutes recorded by 14 surveillance cameras before Lin Weiqi fell from the building. The picture of Lin Weiqi left the study classroom, once to the pump room suspected of cutting his wrists, and then finally towards the fifth floor of the laboratory building.
The local police: “This is the last picture, 18:39 appeared on the fifth floor of the Lian Gallery ……, and then the video went to a blind corner area …….”
CCTV reporter: “Xiao Lin students finally disappeared here.”
At 18:49, another shot captured the falling figure of Lin’s classmate. According to the official statement, the ambulance entered the campus at 19:06, and Dr. Zhang Jie of the Sixth People’s Hospital of Chengdu declared Lin dead at 19:10.
Three “official notification” after the case closed cremation
From the 9th incident to date, the public only through three “official notification” to understand the story.
The first official notification was issued by the local education bureau in the evening of the 10th, saying that the fall was a “personal act”, but Lin’s mother expressed her “disagreement” on Weibo, criticizing that she could not see the key video and could not talk to her classmates and teachers. The incident began to generate a great deal of anger on the Chinese Internet and in front of Chengdu’s 49th High School, demanding the truth.
A second official notice appeared in the evening of the 11th, issued by the local police, stating that the investigation confirmed that the death was “a high fall, excluding criminal cases” and that “the parents have no objections”.
The third official notification came on the afternoon of the 13th, shortly after CCTV’s exclusive disclosure of the surveillance video was broadcast, the Chengdu police issued a notification that Lin’s body was “cremated in the Chengdu funeral home today after his parents had signed the consent.”
Radio Free Asia has made several attempts to contact Lin’s family since the 11th, but no one has answered or their phones have been turned off. Lin’s mother’s Weibo account was last updated on the 11th.
Radio Free Asia tried to contact several parents of the 49th grade students on the 13th, but they all avoided being interviewed due to security concerns.
Cheng Yizhong: “The group avoided an obvious question”
“My friends and I are still half-hearted, these are the official mouthpiece of the media, they do not report on smaller events, larger events they have to go through layers of review, review there is artificial and power in the interference, so the independence is too poor.”
Xie Junbiao, a resident of Chengdu, said in an interview on the 13th, “In fact, why is this matter so noisy, is that there are too many examples of this before, the key camera bad ah, the key film missing ah ……, every time to engage in this (trick), just like every time you cry wolf, now even if you are true, people do not believe it. Also do not believe that ah. The people’s distrust of the official, is a long-term accumulation of this routine every time.”
Cheng Yizhong, former editor-in-chief of Southern Metropolis Daily and the first editor-in-chief of Xinjing Daily, observed that the case had turned into a “super communication event”, and finally Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and other official media seemed to raise sharp questions and opinions on the local authorities’ handling of the case, “but everyone avoided an The obvious question, the extremely obvious answer: why every time there is a similar emergency or natural or man-made disaster, the authorities will first try to silence and suppress public opinion reports, and then they will take the foolish way of handling the situation secretly and cover up the situation?”
The answer is simple, Cheng Yizhong said, because the “facts” in China are determined by a “unipolar ruling mindset that only allows praise but not criticism” and “pursues a super-stable structure.
“In this case, it is impossible to have any voice to question the leaders. People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, the history of the rumors, the big lies, the creation of natural and man-made disasters is still less? Now all the media in China have become the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, how can we believe them? There is no reason to believe it!”
After the Chinese official media’s exclusive investigation to “restore the truth,” Chinese netizens instead raised more questions: If the truth is so pure, why did they cover it up in the first place?
Why did the family members who cried so hard at the beginning stop talking? Why did the key video recordings always have a reason to disappear or not exist? Also, why is there no way for the people or independent media to question and criticize?
The mother of the deceased (Weibo @LifeIsLikeBubble) took to the internet on May 10 to denounce the fact that the school briefly informed her at 9 p.m. that day that her son had fallen to his death from the hallway, but stopped revealing all other circumstances, the surveillance was not provided to her, and what is even more unbelievable is that the school also turned away all parents and warned other students to keep mum on the matter. The picture shows the family seeking the truth in front of the school. (Weibo)
“People like us.”
A netizen who claimed to be a current journalism student, Hammlittlemin, took to Weibo on the 11th to share how she went to Chengdu 49th Middle School on her own initiative that evening to interview and take photos, and ended up being treated violently by police and asked to delete the photos.
“I’m now sitting on the ground editing this content …… just now I’m walking and crying, I want to go tell something, but no ability. I don’t want this to be covered in gauze, I don’t want this to be forgotten.” He wrote.
For now, the account has been deleted. But several photos he recorded of protesters at the scene holding white flowers and begging for the truth have been screenshotted and circulated by netizens.
Cheng Yizhong said, “When I was (editor-in-chief of Chinese media), the authorities’ control was already like this. Whenever an event happens, the official ban runs much faster than your reporter. Before the journalists were there, all ten bans came over or called you directly. Only then there were people like us …… and such editorial reporters …….” “After so many years of purges and crackdowns, such people don’t even exist anymore.”
Tang Jianguang, a veteran Chinese media personality in Beijing, also asked in a long post on Weibo, “The media went from not being able to send out articles if they went to the scene, to not going to the scene if they couldn’t send them out, and they gradually lost the public’s trust. Would the world be a better place without media and journalists?”
The tweet has been deleted.
Chengdu citizen Xie Junbiao, who was arrested and beaten at the police station on the 11th, said he had been “concerned” for the past two days, including the army of 50 cents who harassed him online and branded him a “foreign power”, as well as the public security unit.
“The police station continued to call me over the past two days, asking where I was. I also called my friend, let my friend persuade me not to go to the entrance of the school, this is the meaning of ……. So I will not go well, and then go to them again to provoke the hair.” Xie Junbiao and some reluctantly said, “I just went to the school gate to take a picture, I did not say anything was pulled to the police station, but also beat me. These actions do not the more people question what you are officially hiding?”
At the same time, the local police through the official media to dispel rumors that there is no gag order, the net rumors that “the school told students to keep quiet” and other news is not true.
Deng Jianguo, head of the Department of Communication at Fudan University’s School of Journalism, wrote on Weibo that without facts, there is no clear boundary between responsibility and right. Facts are the foundation of rationality. Eliminating facts will surely eliminate rationality and bring the ultimate danger.
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