China Shames Prostitutes and Pimps

Why doesn't China shame the real assholes? Like computer hackers and people who scam old people out of their money?

No, they go after women who have been told they're crap since before they were born. (I don't mind the Pimps though; I've always thought they were the lowest of the low).



December 13, 2006
As Vice Dragnet Recalls Bad Old Days, Chinese Cry Out
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI, Dec. 12 — For people who saw the event on television earlier this month, the scene was like a chilling blast from a past that is 30 years distant: social outcasts and supposed criminals — in this case 100 or so prostitutes and a few pimps — paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then driven away to jail without trial.

The act of public shaming was intended as the first step in a two-month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution.

But the event has prompted an angry nationwide backlash, with many people making common cause with the prostitutes over the violation of their human rights and expressing outrage in one online forum after another.

So-called rectification campaigns, or struggle sessions, like these were everyday occurrences during the Cultural Revolution, which officially ended in 1976.

In that benighted era, popular justice was meted out and so-called class enemies were publicly beaten, forced to make confessions and sent to work camps for reeducation.

That this event took place in Shenzhen, the birthplace of China’s economic reforms and one of its richest and most open cities, seems to have added to its shock value.

“Even people who commit crimes deserve dignity,” one person wrote on the popular Internet forum 163.com. “Must we go back to the era of the Cultural Revolution?”

Another asked, “Isn’t this a brutal violation of human rights?” Likening the parading to an act out of the Middle Ages, he added, “Shenzhen’s image has been deeply shamed.”

The All China Women’s Federation has reportedly sent a letter expressing its concerns to the Public Security Ministry in Beijing, but later denied having done so. At least one lawyer has stepped forward to defend the prostitutes, citing legal reforms in 1988 that banned acts of public chastisement.

2 comments:

G. Genova said...

By law, they also do this in Tennessee. Well they don't parade them, but they publish names in the morning newspaper. I learned this from a friendly bus driver in Nashville.

Marcie said...

How about shaming the Johns?