SHANGHAI β For people who saw the event on television, the scene was a chilling flashback from 30 years ago: Social outcasts and supposed criminals, in this case prostitutes and a few pimps, were paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then taken to jail without trial.
The act of public shaming was intended as the inaugural event in a two- month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution. Chinese law enforcement often works on the basis of campaigns, and for its organizers the idea of marching or so prostitutes, all dressed in identical yellow smocks, before the cameras must have seemed like a clever way of launching a battle against the sex trade. What the authorities in Shenzhen, an industrial boomtown adjacent to Hong Kong seem not to have counted on was an angry nationwide backlash against their tactics, with many people around China joining in a common cause with the prostitutes over the violation of their human rights and expressing their outrage at the incident in one online forum after another.
So-called rectification campaigns like these were everyday occurrences during the Cultural Revolution, which officially ended in Popular justice was meted out and class enemies were publicly beaten, forced to make confessions and sent to work camps for re- education.
That the practice saw a revival last week in Shenzhen, the birthplace of China's economic reforms and one of its richest and most open cities, seems to have added to peoples' shock. The incident has also reportedly elicited concerns from the All-China Women's Federation, a state affiliated body, which is said to have addressed a letter to the Public Security Ministry in Beijing.
Meanwhile, at least one lawyer has stepped forward to defend the prostitutes, citing legal reforms in that banned acts of public chastisement. Then, paraphrasing a letter by William Pitt during a debate over the excise tax in Britain in , he wrote:. While voices condemning the behavior of the city and its police were the most energetic, some spoke up in support of the crackdown.
