Netizen outrage over police raid on sex workers
Along with Henannews.com’s report about the police raid, several photos of the naked sex workers were posted on the Internet. One of the photos shows a plain clothes police officer pulling a panicked woman’s hair so her face appears on camera.
A video taped during the police raid documented the scene: A plainclothes police officer kicks the door open and finds a naked man and woman inside the room.
The police officer interrogates the woman: “How many men did you sleep with tonight? Say it!” When she refuses to answer him, he rummages through her purse and finds slips with records of her hours and prices of “transactions” and concludes, “26 men.”
The controversy
Although prostitution is illegal in China, the photos and the video that is circulating online has ruffled the feathers of netizens around the country. How can police treat women like this, even ones who broke the law, is the theme on many sites. Many asked whether it was legal to have these nude photos posted on the internet? After all, China is supposed to be cracking down on internet pornography.
Many internet users have expressed sympathy for the women, “It’s not like they wanted to be sex workers if they didn’t have to, and it’s not up to anybody to judge them,” says netizen Zhonghua Re Er.
A post from a reader in Xia’men says prostitutes also deserve basic rights, “How would this woman survive after all these photos of her are over the Internet?”
Many of the angry criticisms online are focused at the police officer featured in the news broadcast, with some posts saying that they're "going to find him." Could this spark another of China’s famous human flesh searches?
A legal opinion
Zhang Xiaodong, a lawyer from a legal firm in Changchun, Jilin Province, answers the question that many netizens have posed: it is illegal for the police to publicize the nude photos of the women? "It is a severe violation of the women's human rights and morally wrong for the police to abuse their power."
The votes are in
Justice Online (Zhengyi Wang) started an online survey about the controversy.
At the time this article was posted, around 8 percent of respondents supported the exposure of the photos to help crack down on prostitution. But 56 percent of people criticized the police for a breach of human rights and 33 percent believed it was improper to publicize the photos but it was the media’s fault they went online.
The police station involved refused to comment on the incident.
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