Zhejiang cops arrest Yunnan prof for libel

Local police in Zhejiang Province have denied that they arrested a university teacher in Yunnan Province for his revealing of misappropriation of State assets in his book, the Yunnan Information Daily reported.

The response came after a Tencent microblog post on Thursday by Zhang Hongliang, a professor with the Minzu University of China, in which the scholar wrote that He Jianming, a teacher with the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, was arrested in February.

"His family was then told by the school that he should be responsible for his own deeds," Zhang wrote.

He is author of the book Deprivation - A Report on Privatization From China's Rural Area, in which he depicted the restructuring process of a supply and marketing cooperative in Yuhuan county in Zhejiang in the late 1990s and how local fishermen were deprived of their assets.

Local police in Yuhuan told the Beijing News Friday that He, along with some local residents in the county, severely disturbed the social order by writing libelous materials, fabricating facts and organizing people to besiege government offices and put up posters with big characters.

With many people involved, the case had lasted for a long time and incited massive social repercussions, said the police.

On February 2, Yuhuan police started to investigate the case and detained He, who confessed to all the charges.

On April 25, He was prosecuted by the Yuhuan prosecutor's office and is currently on trial, reported the newspaper.

An unnamed press officer with the university in Yunnan confirmed on Friday that He indeed worked for the university and he has been arrested.

"He hasn't been teaching in the university for quite a long time," said the officer, adding his case has been transferred to judicial organs.

"We will have a response following the decision made by the judicial organ," the officer said.

A female employee with the public security bureau in the county, who refused to be identified, told the Global Times on Sunday that she was not clear about this case.

Calls to the Yuhuan prosecutor's office and the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics went unanswered as of late Sunday.

The case attracted attention from many people, and aroused heated discussion online about inter-provincial manhunts, in which people are often arrested by police in another provincial region for exposing injustice.

Instead of hunting for He in Yunnan, local police in Zhejiang can directly charge him, Dong Pan, a professor with the School of Management with Beijing Normal University, posted on his Sina Weibo.

"It was so hasty for the police to arrest him, such a manhunt is terrifying," Dong wrote.