Shenyang hawker's execution stokes debate on urban management officers
Newspapers say vendor's death penalty for double murder justified, but some call for effort to reduce tensions with hawkers
The execution last week of a street hawker who stabbed two urban management officers to death caused a huge public uproar over the fairness of the sentence and deepened the longstanding animosity between the street law enforcers and hawkers.
On May 16, 2009, Xia Junfeng was selling roasted sausages and other snacks with his wife in Shenyang in Liaoning province, when the officers - also known as chengguan - seized him, took him to their office, and then beat him. Xia took out a small knife, stabbed two officers to death and injured another.
He was convicted of intentional homicide and sentenced to death in November 2009. His appeal was rejected in April 2011.
Last Wednesday, the Shenyang court announced on its microblog that Xia had been executed after the Supreme People's Court upheld the sentence, sparking grief and anger across the nation.
Many of Xia's supporters expected that given the length of time the top court spent reviewing his case, the sentence would be commuted. But the court defended the judgment, saying Xia's crime was particularly serious and did not deserve a lighter punishment.
In Guangzhou, a group of activists displayed a poster outside the Justice Department that read: "The violent urban management officers deserved to die. Xia Junfeng did not."