http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5199325/Chinese-police-training-manual-offers-tips-on-the-best-way-to-beat-up-offenders.html
thanks NZealand.
Chinese police training manual offers tips on the best way to beat up offenders
A Chinese law enforcement agency has been using a training manual which advises officers on how to use violence without leaving incriminating evidence behind.
"In dealing with the subject, take care to leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body, and no people in the vicinity," states the manual, entitled Practices of City Administration Enforcement. The book was reportedly designed as a training guide for the Chengguan, a type of police force that is charged with targeting anyone it feels is disrupting the peace, ridding China's cities of illegal street hawkers and unlicensed taxi cabs, and checking permits. The Chengguan are widely reviled in China, and their heavy-handed methods frequently result in serious injuries or death. At the end of March, several thousand people in Nanchong, in Sichuan, rioted after a Chengguan officer seriously injured a student. Three years ago in Shanghai, Chengguan officers beat Li Binghao, a 39-year-old man who intervened in a dispute, to death, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. "Officials who use violence are rarely investigated or held accountable," said the goup China Human Rights Defenders in reference to the Chengguan. According to the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, an official with the Beijing municipal bureau of city administration and law enforcement confirmed that the training manual was genuine and had been used in official training sessions. Several portions of the book were leaked onto the internet and have caused a furore. "Who put it up on the net? How did internal material come to be discussed outside?" the unnamed official asked the newspaper. The published sections of the manual explain that officers must quell any dispute swiftly. "Without letting go of the subject, several officers shall act together and in a single move take the individual under bodily control," it said. "Each action must be effective so as not to give the subject any pause for breath." The manual also told officers they should not consider whether they are a physical match for the subject or whether they could harm the subject. "You must become a resolute law enforcer staunchly protecting the dignity of city administrative regulations," it reportedly said. Zhao Yang, a junior officer in Nanjing told the Southern Metropolis Daily: "These things used to be spread by word of mouth, but now they're out in the open. Things like how to protect yourself and how to hit people." In Shanghai, hawkers said they had heard of several cases of abuse by the Chengguan, who they described as generally uneducated thugs. Chen Juan, a 28-year-old hawker who sells trinkets and hairbands, said: "They are different throughout the city. The ones near the centre of town are very violent. They do not always beat you up, but they intimidate us and usually confiscate and stomp on our goods. I was once chased down the street by a gang of them and that left me quite rattled." However, another vendor, who asked not to be named, said it was easy to "play the game", suggesting that casual bribery took care of most problems. "The problem is that many hawkers are doing this because they have nothing else. So when the Chengguan confiscate their goods, they put up a fight. That's why they get beaten up."Chinese police training manual offers tips on the best way to beat up offenders
A Chinese law enforcement agency has been using a training manual which advises officers on how to use violence without leaving incriminating evidence behind.
http://www.globalpost.com/bio/josh-chin
Chinese police tactics revealed: Leave no trace
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8015221.stm
Josh Chin
Josh Chin covers China for GlobaPost as a multimedia reporter. Chin has written about and reported on China and Asia for most of the past eight years. He has telemark skied at...
Josh Chin's Notebook:
April 23, 2009 07:27 ETChinese police tactics revealed: Leave no trace
Well, no one ever said police were good at PR.
As the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph reported yesterday, a user on a popular Chinese online discussion board has published portions of a police training manual — parts of which read like something out of a Bush-era CIA torture memo — setting off a minor firestorm of online outrage.
The book (pictured) is titled "Practices of City Administration Enforcement." Anger has so far focused mostly on one line, which advises officers to "leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity" when "dealing" with offenders.
The line comes from a section of the book called "Methods for the Prevention and Control of Violence," translated here for the benefit of GlobalPost readers:
1 — Use the highest degree of close-quarters dodging movements to avoid any violent attack— move quickly and react sharply. Before the subject has a chance to strike again, control the subject's limbs, quickly make it so he cannot move and do whatever you can to press him down on the ground while telling the subject in a loud voice than any resistance will result in him going to jail.
2 — It's best if multiple officers work together to control the subject bodily in a single move, acting effectively and forcefully so as not to give the subject any pause for breath. Then remove him from the scene, making sure the subject has lost all power to counter-attack, and confiscate any of the subject's property left at the scene.
4 — Do not attempt to control the subject's violent actions in front of a crowd. If a crowd cannot be avoided, use relatively soft tactics.
5 — When dealing with the violent subject, take care to leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity. Finish the work in a rapid sequence of actions and leave no trace. As soon as you engage, preventative action must be neat and tidy. Do not hesitate, use all necessary force.
6 — The entire process needs to be carried out calmly and without becoming distracted or flustered. Do not worry about whether you are a match for the subject, whether you might injure him, how long this kind of encounter will take to end, etc. In this instance, you should become ego-less, a resolute law enforcment officer defending the dignity of city administrative regulations.
Several state-run media organizations, including the central propaganda organ People's Daily, have questioned whether the book was actually used in training police officers, even whether it actually exists. But the relatively independant Southern Weekend newspaper has found a link to the book on the website of the state-run Xinhua Book Store, while sister paper Southern Metropolis Daily says a Beijing law enforcement official has confirmed it was used in training.
As the Telegraph notes, the book is aimed at chengguan, or "city administrative officers," a particularly unpopular branch of Chinese law enforcement, often derided as thugs with badges, responsible for rounding up illegal street vendors and other "undesirables."
A completely unscientific survey of online response to the book finds a vast majority of Chinese netizens angry over the book, with a small minority — say around 30 percent — sticking up for the police as a "disadvantaged group."
Interested Chinese speakers can see the original post here.
One nagging question surrounding the furor is, why now? The book was published in 2006, and (despite the Telegraph's talk of "leaks") is apparently publically available. It even appears to have come up for discussion on a different online forum two years ago. Is the financial crisis making people cranky? Or maybe someone has a grudge against the chengguan and is trying to sabotage them, in which case it could be any one of a several tens of millions of people.
Josh Chin
Josh Chin covers China for GlobaPost as a multimedia reporter. Chin has written about and reported on China and Asia for most of the past eight years. He has telemark skied at...
Josh Chin's Notebook:
Chinese police tactics revealed: Leave no trace
Well, no one ever said police were good at PR.
As the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph reported yesterday, a user on a popular Chinese online discussion board has published portions of a police training manual — parts of which read like something out of a Bush-era CIA torture memo — setting off a minor firestorm of online outrage.
The book (pictured) is titled "Practices of City Administration Enforcement." Anger has so far focused mostly on one line, which advises officers to "leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity" when "dealing" with offenders.
The line comes from a section of the book called "Methods for the Prevention and Control of Violence," translated here for the benefit of GlobalPost readers:
1 — Use the highest degree of close-quarters dodging movements to avoid any violent attack— move quickly and react sharply. Before the subject has a chance to strike again, control the subject's limbs, quickly make it so he cannot move and do whatever you can to press him down on the ground while telling the subject in a loud voice than any resistance will result in him going to jail.
2 — It's best if multiple officers work together to control the subject bodily in a single move, acting effectively and forcefully so as not to give the subject any pause for breath. Then remove him from the scene, making sure the subject has lost all power to counter-attack, and confiscate any of the subject's property left at the scene.
4 — Do not attempt to control the subject's violent actions in front of a crowd. If a crowd cannot be avoided, use relatively soft tactics.
5 — When dealing with the violent subject, take care to leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity. Finish the work in a rapid sequence of actions and leave no trace. As soon as you engage, preventative action must be neat and tidy. Do not hesitate, use all necessary force.
6 — The entire process needs to be carried out calmly and without becoming distracted or flustered. Do not worry about whether you are a match for the subject, whether you might injure him, how long this kind of encounter will take to end, etc. In this instance, you should become ego-less, a resolute law enforcment officer defending the dignity of city administrative regulations.
Several state-run media organizations, including the central propaganda organ People's Daily, have questioned whether the book was actually used in training police officers, even whether it actually exists. But the relatively independant Southern Weekend newspaper has found a link to the book on the website of the state-run Xinhua Book Store, while sister paper Southern Metropolis Daily says a Beijing law enforcement official has confirmed it was used in training.
As the Telegraph notes, the book is aimed at chengguan, or "city administrative officers," a particularly unpopular branch of Chinese law enforcement, often derided as thugs with badges, responsible for rounding up illegal street vendors and other "undesirables."
A completely unscientific survey of online response to the book finds a vast majority of Chinese netizens angry over the book, with a small minority — say around 30 percent — sticking up for the police as a "disadvantaged group."
Interested Chinese speakers can see the original post here.
One nagging question surrounding the furor is, why now? The book was published in 2006, and (despite the Telegraph's talk of "leaks") is apparently publically available. It even appears to have come up for discussion on a different online forum two years ago. Is the financial crisis making people cranky? Or maybe someone has a grudge against the chengguan and is trying to sabotage them, in which case it could be any one of a several tens of millions of people.
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