2006年普利策国际报道奖作品 3

In Worker‘s Death, View of China‘s Harsh Justice 3
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Wang Binyin said he tried to pull his older brother away. He recalls saying: "You can‘t do this. We still have an old father at home. What am I going to do?" When the rampage ended, Wang Binyu tossed his knife in the Yellow River and turned himself in at a local police station. As it turned out, the two top bosses - Mr. Chen and Wu Xinguo - escaped harm.
Mr. Wang‘s initial trial, on June 29, ended with a death sentence. His family was not notified of the trial date and did not attend. He seemed destined to be one of the thousands of people executed each year with little public notice. But on Sept. 4, the New China News Agency, the government‘s news service, published a jailhouse interview with Mr. Wang that was astonishing for its content and for the mere fact that it was printed.
"I want to die," Mr. Wang said. "When I am dead, nobody can exploit me anymore. Right?"
Of his crime, Mr. Wang said, "I just could not take it any longer. I had taken enough from them." But, he later added, "I should not have killed the other people. I did not mean to let it happen."
Finally, he offered a lament for his fellow migrant workers. "My life is a small thing," he said. "I hope that society will pay attention and respect us."
Chinese journalists say the authors of the article picked the case because they thought it dovetailed with a campaign by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to help peasants. Newspapers, assuming the interview signaled official approval, jumped on the story.
Interviews with legal scholars followed, with some arguing that the system should be nimble enough to give Mr. Wang a more lenient sentence. Internet discussion boards were filled with indignation.
But the coverage was put to a sudden stop. Internet search engines were ordered to censor Wang Binyu‘s name, and newspapers were told to drop the story before the appeal was heard in late September. Most likely, the public outrage had alarmed central government officials who did not want to see a death sentence so openly questioned. From his jail cell, Wang Binyu told his younger brother that he thought local officials were eager to execute him, because a reversal of the death sentence could harm their careers.
The appeal was held in secret. Mr. Wang‘s father, Wang Liding, happened to bring his son a pair of shoes a day earlier. Otherwise, he would not have known. At one point, the father said that he shouted out during the proceeding because prosecutors said his son‘s wages had been fully paid. The elder Mr. Wang was briefly removed after the outburst.
Now, the family has still not collected the unpaid wages owed the dead son. Donations have helped them build a new room on their crumbling house. The father has wrapped the green booklet certifying his son‘s cremation in folded paper. It is his last record of his son.
In October, before the execution, court officials in Ningxia called the father with what he thought was good news. He was told he could come collect his son‘s unpaid salary. He traveled for more than a day to Ningxia from Gansu. But when he arrived, he found that the lure of wages had been a lie. Officials wanted him to sign his son‘s execution warrant.
Illiterate, the father could only smudge the paper with his thumb.
"It was wrong of him to kill people," the father said. "But there was a cause."