Police chief who ordered 16-year-old’s arrest in online rumour case suspended

A Gansu county authority on Monday night suspended its police chief who ordered the arrest of a 16-year old boy last week, the youngest known online user to be detained in an extensive government campaign to crack down on online rumours.

“On advice of the disciplinary inspection commission, Zhangjiachuan’s standing committee has decided to suspended Bai Yongqiang as the chief of the Zhangjiachuan police bureau,” the brief statement read, without giving further details on what led to his downfall.

Disciplinary inspection commissions at all levels of the Communist Party’s structures serve mostly as anti-corruption organs. The emphasis of the commission’s influence in the decision to suspend Bai suggested a link to online allegations of his involvement in a corruption case.

Chinese online users dug out an earlier judgement that Wuwei Intermediate People’s Court had issued on its website, in which it had recorded that Bai had admitted giving favours worth 50,000 yuan to his former superior on multiple occasions between year 1995 and 2005. The judgment ruled that Bai’s former superior was guilty of taking bribes from over a dozen of people. However, Bai was not prosecuted on bribery charges.

Zhangjiachuan, a little known backwater county in the inland Gansu province has come under the spotlight of the national media after its police force took Yang Hui from school in the middle of his class last week. They arrested him on suspicion of “inciting trouble” by “spreading rumours, inciting mass demonstrations and seriously obstructing and social order.”