The CCTV footage dated June 10 at 2.40 a.m. shows a woman in white dining with three other females, when a man in an olive jacket approaches their table and puts his hand on her back. She pushes him away several times, and then the man slaps her. Soon the situation turns into chaos, with the man and his companions hitting all of the women. They shove one of the woman’s friends to the ground, kick her, and throw a chair at her.
Despite staff attempts to intervene, the four-minute footage shows the men dragging the woman by her hair outside the restaurant and stomping on her head. One of her companions was shoved back, and she fell against the curb and was badly injured in the one-sided fight. The woman in white repeatedly says: “I don’t know him!”
Slow Response of Police and Contradictory Police Records: Netizens
Netizens criticized how long it took the police to arrive at the site of the melee, and doubt the police record of the incident.The Airport Road police station is only half a mile from the barbecue restaurant where the violent assaults occurred. It was the police station that sent police to the scene of the assault.
An officer at the police station told Chinese media outlets that an order was received from the municipal police call center at 2:41 a.m. on June 10, asking them to send police to the restaurant, and that the police arrived at the restaurant at 2:46 a.m. only to find the attackers had already left.
After the CCTV footage went viral online, the Airport Road police station issued a notice on June 11, claiming that all nine suspects (seven male, two female) were apprehended, some feel only because of pressure from the online criticism.
According to the notice, four suspects were caught in Yancheng city of China’s eastern province of Jiangsu on June 11. Yancheng is roughly 600 miles south of Tangshan city.
However, according to a police log kept by Tangshan Criminal Investigation Department uploaded by an anonymous netizen, a request to send police was forwarded to and taken by the Airport Road police station at 2:43 a.m. on June 10, but a follow-up record stated that police did not arrive at the restaurant at 3:00 a.m. They arrived more than three hours later at 6:09 a.m., and at 6:10 a.m. they brought the parties involved in the assault back to the police station for questioning.
Alleged Criminal Records of Two Attackers: Report
Chinese media outlets reported on June 11 that the local police released a timeline claiming “all the nine suspects were caught” by 2:28 p.m., and disclosing the full names of two of them.The suspects named by the local police—Chen Jizhi and Liu Tao—are the same as two fugitives who were wanted by police on criminal charges, including aggravated assault and unlawful detention, from December 2015 to March 2018, according to Chinese news outlet Sina. The reporter confirmed Chen’s personal information was the same as that of Chen Jizhi in a previous court verdict.
An online post published on June 10 by a blogger named Gu Ziming claimed that Liu and Chen were still on the run in 2017; nonetheless, on April 17, 2017, while driving Chen’s car, Liu crashed into eight automobiles consecutively, abandoned the car, and ran away. But soon after the traffic accident, Chen, wanted by the police, appeared in the local traffic police department and Tangshan intermediate court for the traffic accident.
Liu was arrested in 2018, but Chen was “at large,” wrote the post.
The blogger quoted local court verdicts in his post and accused the “protective umbrella,” that is, local officials who protected Chen and Liu, of receiving bribes from them.
‘Protective Umbrella’ of Corrupt Officials and Police: Reports
Not long after the assault, one of the attackers posted a video online, saying in the 30-second footage: “It’s settled. 60 W.” The “W” is an abbreviation of Chinese pinyin for “wan,” meaning “ten thousand.” He is saying that he paid 600,000 yuan (about $89,000) to get himself and his companions freed.The video was reposted on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/truth8964_1/status/1535453407099686914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1535453407099686914%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.creaders.net%2Fchina%2F2022%2F06%2F11%2F2493083.html
The Epoch Times is not able to identify the man in the video or verify the authenticity of what he says, as our multiple calls to the local police authorities could not get through.
An article on the Chinese news portal Netease, titled “Deputy Governor of Hebei Province, Former Party Secretary of Tangshan Has Served as a Protective Umbrella for Black and Evil Forces!” was published on June 12, which discloses that Zhang He, former deputy provincial governor of Heibei province and former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary of Tangshan city, used gangsters to silence reporters who wouldn’t follow his orders to cover up crimes in Tangshan. Zhang fell in April 2020 for “seriously violating disciplines and the law.” He worked in critical positions in Tangshan for nearly 40 years.
From Chinese media reports, at least eight provincial-level officials, eight municipal- and district-level officials, four police chiefs, and four senior judicial officials have been investigated and removed from their posts since 2014. Some of them are reportedly connected to Zhang.
In China, the CCP uses the general term “violating disciplines and the law,” for both political and economic reasons, to label the crimes committed by officials or officers.
A notice by Langfang Public Security Bureau Guangyang Branch was published at midnight on June 11, stating that the provincial police authorities of Hebei Province had designated Guangyang Branch to take over the investigation of the assault case. Langfang and Tangshan are cities in Hebei province. This is usually a sign that the integrity of the officials in the city is questionable, or that the case is one that is significant to the CCP authorities.
Ren Jianming, a professor of public administration at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told the pro-Beijing Singaporean news outlet Zaobao that the investigation being taken over by Langfang means that “there is a high probability that [the case] is involved in the black society and the evil forces.”
The Chinese term “the black society and the evil forces” refers to gangsters involved in gambling, prostitution, and extortion, as well as coercive monopolies, loan sharks, and “underground police” who enforce informal rules in street markets. These gangsters have their protective umbrellas and relationship networks within the government and police force who aid and abet them.
The most likely people to provide the protective umbrella are the local police in Tangshan, according to Ren.
“If the case is to be investigated by the Tangshan police, there will be problems ... Not only will it damage the image of the local police, but also the image of the entire police force,” said Ren.
Mr. Zheng (an alias), a Chinese lawyer in mainland China, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times in an interview on June 13 that the restaurant assault case is basically a case of background (support), depending on how strong the protection the suspects have in the government or in the police force. “If they have a background, the case will be delayed; if they don’t, it will take only two to three months to have it tried in the court,” Zheng said.
