Chinese waitress freed after killing official – and winning nationwide support [-A role model for Cambodian Beer Girls?]

Deng Yujiao (l.) exits a local court with her mother, in Badong County, central China's Hubei Province, on Tuesday. Deng, a Chinese karaoke bar waitress who became a folk hero after fatally stabbing a communist official who demanded sex, was freed Tuesday by a court that ruled she acted in self-defense. (Hao Tongqian/Xinhua/AP)

The trial of Deng Yujiao, who stabbed an official demanding sex, highlighted the power of the Internet to rally popular support.

June 16, 2009
By Peter Ford
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Beijing - A karaoke bar waitress who won nationwide sympathy and support after killing a local official who demanded sex was freed Tuesday by a Chinese court.

The surprise decision provided fresh evidence of the power of the Internet, where Deng Yujiao had become a popular heroine and a symbol of resistance to corrupt and licentious government officials.

"If the case had not attracted so much attention, the result would have been worse," says Lan Zhixue, a member of the legal team advising Ms. Deng.

Deng was found guilty of intentional injury and using excessive force, but was not punished because she was acting in self-defense, the state-run media reported after a two-hour hearing.

"The final judgment conformed to justice and to public opinion," says Wu Gan, an Internet activist who was among the first bloggers to bring the case to public attention. "This case has had a very positive outcome."

Deng had admitted stabbing Deng Guida (no relation) after he had insisted she have sex with him in the club where she worked. According to a local government account, he reportedly pushed her down onto a sofa twice when she refused, and slapped her across the face with a wad of banknotes as he demanded "special services."

The police, whom Ms. Deng called immediately to report the incident, initially took her to a mental hospital. Early reports from the police spokesman in Badong, Hubei Province, suggested that the young woman was a depressive who had lost control of herself during an argument with the victim.

Once details of her ordeal began to leak out, however, her case drew massive attention on Internet chat rooms and other online forums.

So fiercely did ordinary citizens, academics, lawyers, and women's groups express their solidarity with Ms. Deng that the authorities feared her case was becoming a focal point for public anger at Communist party officialdom, and banned media coverage on the eve of the sensitive June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Contradictory local police reports, however, only strengthened public suspicions that colleagues of Mr. Deng, who worked in the local government's business promotion office, were orchestrating a cover-up. Eventually the police allowed Ms. Deng to await her trial at home.

The outpouring of sympathy for Ms. Deng, and vitriolic attacks on her tormentor, echoed similar emotions expressed on the Internet last year during the trial of Yang Jia, who was executed after admitting to the murder of six policemen.

Mr. Yang said he killed them in revenge for torture he had suffered earlier at the hands of Shanghai police officers, and his plea of mitigating circumstances won widespread public support.

Cambodia: The culture of impunity is perpetuated

Two Men Sought in Brazen Rape, Abduction

By Seng Ratana, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
09 September 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audia program

Police are seeking two men suspected of raping a young woman after a brazen abduction from a Phnom Penh beer garden last week, in a crime rights workers say is not uncommon in a growing culture of impunity.

The victim, who is 16 years old, was allegedly kidnapped by two men at gunpoint from Soun Samneang beer garden around 1 am on Friday night, according to her brother, Ra, who witnessed the abduction and asked that only his first name be used.

Ra's account was corroborated by a police report and testimony of another witness, who asked not to be named with the two men still at large.

The men had been drinking at the beer garden earlier that night, Ra said. They drank until the restaurant closed, and just as Ra's mother arrived to pick up his sister, they returned in their car, a green Toyota Corolla, brandishing pistols.

The two men, both in their twenties, pushed his sister and mother into the car, Ra said in a recent interview from his apartment near Soun Samneang, where he shares a room with guards and waitresses from the restaurant.

He was unable to help because of the guns, Ra said.

"That night, they came," Ra said. "I was fighting with them, and they said, 'Be careful of dying,' and they also pushed me toward the car. I want these gangsters put in prison."

The kidnappers took the two women on National Road 6, dropping the mother at the Japanese Friendship Bridge in Phnom Penh, Ra said, citing accounts of his sister and mother. They then took his sister to Tek Meas guesthouse, on the Chroy Changva peninsula, where both men raped her, Ra alleged.

Chamkar Mon district police said they have received a complaint from the victim, who said she asked to use the phone of Tek Meas, after the alleged assailants left her, taking her phone and her jewelry.

However, staff members at the Tek Meas guesthouse said Monday they had no knowledge of the incident.

A night guard at the guesthouse, who declined to give his name, said he was asleep by 11 pm that night and did not know two men had taken a girl into a room.

"I know nothing. I heard nothing. I went to sleep as usual," he said.

Everyone with knowledge of Friday's incident was afraid to give his or her full name, for fear of reprisal.

The owner of the Soun Samneang beer garden, who gave her first name, Neat, said she had helped the victim file a complaint.

"I'm worried about this kind of case happening again at my restaurant, because the restaurant has no right to keep the guns of its visitors," she said. It is not possible to know which guests have guns, she said.

A coworker, Nuon, who is a beer promotion girl at Soun Samneang, said she and other girls at the restaurant are now afraid for their safety.

"Even the young gangsters have guns. That's why I'm afraid," she said, adding that she was forced to continue working to earn money and support her parents.

Ra said his sister and mother have gone into hiding.

Chamkar Mon District Police Chief Ouch Sokhorn said Monday the two suspects had been identified, but he declined to provide further details in the ongoing investigation.

However, Friday night's alleged crime was not an isolated incident, and similar cases are not hard to find.

Another victim, Leak, 21, worked as an Angkor Beer promotion girl last year at a similar beer garden in Phnom Penh. In May 2007 she was taken by three men with a gun who forced her into their car and took her to another guesthouse along National Road 6, not far from the Tek Meas.

"One man pointed the gun and forced me to get in the car, and they brought me to a guesthouse," she said. "One man wore a condom, but the other two did not. That's why I'm afraid of AIDS."

The event still haunts her, she said, and the memory of it hurts. She never filed a complaint, and now regrets it, she said, because the three men who raped her remain free.

Lim Mony, director of the women's department of the rights group Adhoc, said criminals in Cambodia look down on the police, their impunity a product of the inability of police to fully protect the people.

"It shows that the honesty and dignity of the law are low down," she said. "The police do not fully protect the safety of society."

Most important, she said, such abductions and rapes exhibit a disregard for women, and especially women who work at night.

Nop Sarin Sreyroth, secretary-general of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, said Friday night's case highlighted a worsening problem, where offenders have no respect for the law.

If the men are not arrested and punished, it will affect the feeling of women who work at night, she said, and will encourage other similar crimes.

Phnom Penh Police Chief Touch Naroth said last week the city was meeting with guesthouse owners to make sure they register their guests before renting them a room, or face a fine or closure.

Guesthouses have become a favorite place for petty criminals to do drugs, commit crimes, and rape women, he said.

Helping a victim of kidnapping and rape is out of the question: A sick society?

A young girl kidnapped under the threat of a gun

07 Sept 2008
By Kang Kallyan
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the original article in French

A 16-year-old hostess (beer girl) working for a “beer garden” in Chamcar Mon (Phnom Penh) was abused by two men during the night of Saturday 05 September.

The two men who committed the crime were customers of the restaurant and they got acquainted with the young hostess during the evening. Lying in waiting in their car, they waited until the young girl and her mother – who always accompanied her daughter back to their nearby home every evening – to walk by and asked mother and daughter to follow them under the threat of a gun. The kidnappers got rid of the mother soon after by pushing her out of the car during the trip. In the process, the kidnappers also dropped one of their guns on the road. The car then took off to one of the numerous “love hotels” – guesthouse-like for short stay – located in Prek Leap, outside the city along National Road No. 6.

In spite of the screaming and the call for help by the victim, a room was still rented for them. The owner of the establishment did not even register their names, as required by the district police. Clients of the hotel, as well as the employees, turned a blind eye to the desperate begging for help by the victim who was raped by the two men. After their misdeed, the pair then took off in their car without any problem.

The young girl came out of the room after the rapists left, she then borrowed a phone from an employee to call her boss who came to fetch her. He then took her to the police station to file her complain. Her mother brought along the piece of evidence: the gun dropped on the road. The gun bears a serial number and if it belongs to a cop or a soldier, its owner can be traced.

The Prek Leap police chief cannot be reached on Sunday. This type of aggression – including kidnapping and rape of young women working in restaurants – are quite frequent in the city. However, the criminals are rarely arrested or brought to face justice. The police do not even keep track of the number of this type of violence.