Law and the right to check power

Ma Yaojun, a resident in Zaoyang, Hubei province, was kept in custody for 15 days, only because he filmed the law enforcement process of the local court. When he went to the director of the local court, Tian Yubin, and tried to argue with him, Tian told him, "I can film you, but you cannot film me." In an interview, Tian admitted that there is no law or regulation to detain citizens who film law enforcement in action, but insisted, "it is customary for the court to do so".

Filming is a tool of citizens in the modern age to protect their rights by keeping a watch on those who exercise power. Since videos can be followed by almost anyone, and are relatively difficult to be faked or tampered with, citizens can use them to monitor those in public office.

Tian's assertion that the court can film citizens while citizens are not allowed to film the court is baseless. It aims to deprive citizens of the right to watch and record those in authority. He hopes that, in the absence of video proof, he can arbitrarily interpret facts and keep his authority free of any checks and limits.

Tian, despite being a director of the local court, does not respect the spirit of the rule of law when he says it is "customary" for the court to detain citizens who dare to film law enforcement. The courts must abide by the law and not only follow so-called "custom". If the courts are driven by their own "customs", then they can actually do anything and infringe citizens' rights.

If "customs" replace laws in the courts, then where would be the authority and dignity of law, and how could the law protect the rights of citizens?

Shan Shibing

http://shanshibing.blog.sohu.com/119824413.html

Fill the gap for migrant laborers

Recently the mayor of Shenzhen Wang Rong expressed his hope that the concept of "peasant workers" will disappear soon. His contention derived from the prospect that the second generation of "peasant workers" will wear fashionable garments and stylish hair, and will not come back to rural areas.

The concept of "peasant workers" reminds people of laborers with shabby clothes and mud on their face, who do back-breaking work only to earn hunger wages. If the concept could really disappear, how great it would be!

But things might be not so upbeat as Mayor Wang expected. Though a few second-generation migrant workers from rural areas appear stylish, their social status and welfare remain unequal. Migrant workers in Shenzhen still hold the status of "agricultural population" on ID cards. When their children go to school in Shenzhen, they have to pay extra tuition fees.

To make "peasant workers" history, the key is not to abolish the concept but to end the discriminations, i.e. the disparity between urban and rural areas in economic and social development. First of all, the household registration system should be reformed to scrap the division between urban and rural identities. Then, we need to gradually fill up the gulf between cities and the countryside in economic and social development. When the rural areas are as prosperous as cities, the concept of "peasant workers" -- and the discrimination against them -- would perish.

Sheng Shi Wei Yan

http://shengdalin.blog.sohu.com/120057018.html

(China Daily 07/08/2009 page8)