Angry netizens have been protesting the harsh sentence given to a young man in Liaocheng, Shandong Province, after he killed a debt collector for sexually insulting his mother.
After a group of thugs came round in April 2016 to enforce a debt owed by his mother, Su Yinxia, to a local loan shark and real estate developer, 23-year-old Yu Huan sprang to her defense. The thugs were physically assaulting his mother, according to
Southern Weekend , but the final straw came when one of them suggested that she became a prostitute to pay off the debt, but that he wouldn't pay more than 80 yuan for her. Yu attacked all four of the men with a knife, and one, Du Zhihao, died of his injuries in hospital. The police had previously been called to the quarrel by a staff member at Su's office, but had left after only a few minutes after verbally warning the men not to use force.
The conviction is "abnormally heavy" and "not right," as it ignores the obvious factor of self-defense, even if Yu's actions were excessive, said Zhao Bingzhi, chairman of the Chinese Criminal Law Research Association, to news site
Caixin.com.
Zhao pointed out that, based on testimony from the first trial, Yu and Su were clearly subject to an unlawful assault, and that although Yu was armed and the men weren't, it was a reasonable measure for him to grab a knife since he was outnumbered four-to-one. 'Mitigated punishments' handed out in cases of excessive self-defense are normally less than a decade in prison, Zhao said, but he argued Yu deserved an even lighter sentence.
The debt collectors' actions were obviously wrong, said Wang Jue, a lawyer based in Yunnan province, but the police also bore heavy responsibility for failing to intervene. Chen Xiahong, a researcher of bankruptcy law at China University of Political Science and Law, said to Caixin.com that a mature individual bankruptcy system and debt clearing scheme is urgently needed in China to prevent loan sharking. Su reportedly borrowed more than 1 million yuan (US$145,480), at an extortionate rate of 10 percent interest a month.
“If someone suddenly falls ill, loses the ability to work or loses a stable income due to job change, he or she needs individual bankruptcy scheme to get both themselves and the loaners out of an awkward situation,” Chen said.
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