2009-06-13

Kunming Police Release Investigation Results in “Primary School Prostitution Case”

[小学女生卖淫案]警方认定存在卖淫行为

Beijing News, 2009-06-10

Nearly three months after the overnight detention and interrogation of two primary school female students, their mother and her domestic partner on suspicion of prostitution, Kunming (Yunnan Province) police and procuracy officials issued the results of their investigation: the domestic partner, Liu Shihua, and mother, Zhang Anfen, “intentionally plotted, engaged in deception, violently resisted the law, deceived the media, and misled the masses in creating a heinously influential incident.” Kunming prosecutors have charged the two with criminally “sheltering prostitution”—a charge related to Liu's 17-year-old daughter “Chen Yan,” not Zhang's two daughters—and are holding Liu in criminal detention while Zhang has been released on bail.

The so-called “3.16” (16 March, 2009) incident involved two community patrolmen—typically laid-off employees of defunct state enterprises hired to assist local police, but not official public security personnel—subduing by force participants in what they believed to be a prostitution ring. After police at the local public security station released Liu, Zhang and her two daughters the next day due to a lack of evidence, Liu and Zhang had medical examiners at a local hospital document their injuries and confirm that Zhang's daughters' were virgins. They also told local media they were unjustly accused, tortured while in detention and seeking damages from the police. The investigation report alleges that the patrolmen had indeed witnessed “Chen Yan” soliciting—she had been fined 1,300RMB in October 2008 for prostitution—but Liu and Zhang then had her switch clothes with Zhang's eldest daughter to confuse police. According to police and prosecutors, none of the suspects were tortured during interrogation and their injuries resulted from the scuffle with the community patrolmen, who have since been dismissed and “dealt with.”

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