Soon after Wang Shuai's defamation case spread widely via media report and got strong public support, the Henan province police apologized to Wang and he was given a symbolic compensation of RMB783.93. However, another outraging case has been exposed in inner Mongolia.
A netizen, Wu Baoquan (吴保全), who had exposed the land requisition problem of the Ordos city government had received a 2 year sentence for defaming the local government. The sentence has broken the record of online defamation case according to local news.
Two-year imprisonment for speaking the truth
According to Southern Metropolis’ report (via siyi in bullogger), Wu Baoquan had been arrested twice in 2007 and 2008. In his first arrest, he was detained for 10 days and in his second arrest he was sentenced to one year imprisonment. He filed for an appeal and was sentenced to two year imprisonment.
Wu explained that he was helping his friend Kang Shulin to post in the Internet after receiving his phone call about land requisition problem back home on 6 September 2007. The post was titled as “Leaders: Are you going to kill your peasant brothers and sisters?”. It further explained that the government had forced the peasant to sell off their land at extremely low price (the lowest is RMB 250 / mu). Then sold the land in auction, with the highest beat at RMB 820,000 / mu. Earlier promise of 2 mu irrigated land 0.5 mu green house / person was never realized and visit petition could not solve their problem. He was arrested on 16 September and detained for 10 days.
He did further investigation about the land requisition problem pointing out that the 48,000 mu developmental project only got the approval by inner Mongolia autonomous government and had never been approved by the Central government. According to land requisition document the compensation for irrigated land should be RMB 25000 / mu, dry land RMB 20,000 / mu and grassland 10,000 / mu. But what the peasant got in two of the villages was: irrigated land 5757 / mu, dry land 800 /mu and grassland 250 / mu.
Apart from spreading out the news, he also organized the villagers to prepare for a legal case. He was then arrested again in April 2008 for defaming leaders and the government. However, it was never clear who exactly Wu had defamed as there were no mentioning of names in his posts. However ridiculous it is, Wu was sentenced to one year imprisonment in his first trial and 2 years in his appeal, from April 29, 2008-April 28, 2010. He has already been detained for one year till now.
Illegal land requisition
The land requisition has been exposed by local media in March 2008. Peasant's land had become local government officials’ cottages. And the previously forest for preventing land erosion had turned into grassland.
Add oil Wu Baoquan! Free Wu Baoquan!
Netizens started campaign to support Wu by posting the details of the case to different forums. For example in Tianya, makenlai accused the local government for abducting Wu and invited other netizens’ help to disseminate the information. Although the post hasn't been deleted. The comment section had been closed.
Netizens’ Opinion Harmonized
However, it seems that the Ordos government was trying to suppress the discussion. According to Southern Metropolis’ report on 20 of April (via chinagfw), the Ordos forum under Baidu had been suspended with a notice: Sorry now we only allow the forum management team and old users to post in this forum. Netizen “QWE you and me” reported that Club.china.com had deleted post on “Ordos fights back netizen add oil campaign”. Another netizen “zhangfei2002″ reported that people.com.cn, Ordos forum, Sohu.com have all started to delete post on Wu.