Iron fist against protesting depositors defrauded by banks in Henan
A businessman has been held for four months only for demonstrating in Zhengzhou to get his savings back, Reuters reports. About 600,000 people have been caught up in the scandal. Such extended detention in China is unprecedented for this type of action, but the past two years have seen a sharp increase in economic protests.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Ou Yangyun travelled to the city of Zhengzhou to seek compensation after his bank account containing all his savings was frozen, but four months later, the 39-year-old small business owner from Changsha has not made it home, the Reuters news agency reported today.
Ou and more than a dozen other victims of one of China's biggest banking scandals had gathered outside a train station in Zhengzhou, shouting, "Henan banks, return our savings!", footage of the February protest shows.
The group was wandering the streets of Zhengzhou for about 30 minutes, until one of the several unidentified men who had been tailing them shouted "Close the Net!”, at which point, the protesters were pushed into a bus and brought to a police station, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident.
Most were released after several days in detention, but Ou and two other defrauded depositors remained in police custody, the two people said.
This is another example of the ongoing crackdown on economic protests that have spread across China since 2022, after hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes in a property bust or became victims of investment scams.
The situation began about two years ago, when some 600,000 people lost their savings in a US$ 4.2 billion fraud involving four banks in Henan province, sparking concerns among some analysts about the stability of rural lenders.
The scandal and the ensuing protests were not directly caused by the slowdown in China's economy. But the unusually harsh treatment meted out to Ou and the other two people may reflect the authorities’ sensitivity to growing dissent over financial distress, two experts told Reuters.
It is not unusual for people to be detained during economic protests, but they are usually released after a few days, unlike those involved in political protests who are often detained for months, two analysts explained.
China Dissent Monitor, a project by Washington-based rights group Freedom House, reported 805 economic protests, a 127 per cent increase in the fourth quarter of 2023 from a year earlier.
These include demonstrations by workers over unpaid wages, property buyers whose flats were not built, and investors and retirees fleeced of their money.
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27/07/2021 12:46
25/01/2024 11:54
