Online poll asked for reporter's murder

Police have been looking into alleged death threats against a business journalist, who claims that posts have been published anonymously online accusing him of smearing the local real estate market, and said that a poll has been set up to ask Net users whether he should be killed or not.

The person, using the online nickname "Naked Living Naked Sleeping," first put a post online on October 8 with the headline "To save Wenzhou's economy, China Business News reporter Chen Zhouxi must be killed first."

Chen told the Global Times Wednesday that he wrote articles in August about the real estate situation in Wenzhou, saying banks were foreclosing on some properties as a result of declining real estate prices in the area.

"I wrote these stories objectively, and the stories are entirely based on facts," Chen said, adding that he couldn't understand why people would say he was spreading rumors, and that the post had seriously hurt and defamed him.

With the support of his newspaper, Chen went to a notary office on October 12 to verify and prove the existence of the posts, and then reported the case to the Wutian police station in the Ouhai district of Wenzhou.

"I was really worried that the person behind this online post is attempting to mobilize the masses against me," Chen said, adding that the local police station told him they had accepted it as a genuine case and considered it slander.

A police officer from the Wutian police station told the Global Times that because the case was still under investigation, no details could be released because it could influence the investigation.

The threats thus far seem to be just the angry words, and if they remain verbal attacks without other repercussions, police will consider it to be a public security case, meaning that only warnings or administrative detention would be suitable punishments, Chen Tao, a lawyer with the Criminal Law Committee under the Beijing Lawyers Association, told the Global Times.

The Supreme People's Court last month clarified situations in which a person who spreads terror threats and causes public disorder or economic losses can be jailed for five years or more by the Criminal Law. But some complain that threats on personal safety are not checked by the law, and they cannot wait until the personal harm is really carried out.

In March, after two female middle school students from Yingkou, Liaoning Province, engaged in a fight on the Internet, the insults between them led to a real fight between two groups of people, in which several were injured, the Liaoshen Evening News reported.

You Wei, a law professor from the East China University of Political Science and Law, told the Chinese Business News that online verbal insults can be quite dangerous.

"While most are rational, some people take these affairs very seriously and commit crimes without thinking them through. This can have severe consequences," You said.