An appalling human rights violation in China demands your attention. A recent case of teenage bullying in Jiangyou, Sichuan, sparked nationwide outrage after a video went viral online, in which the perpetrator boasted, “I’ve been to the police station more than ten times — they let me out within 20 minutes each time.”
The bullying scandal has led to extensive calls into question the effectiveness of policing and the juvenile justice system in China.
With the fallout from the incident growing, local residents spontaneously organized multiple peaceful gatherings calling for a lawful and transparent resolution.
Although these gatherings remained orderly and restrained, authorities responded with indiscriminately violent assualts by riot police against the large crowd, forcibly dispersing protestors from public spaces.
The response was not one of accountability, but of preemptive force— driven by the need to maintain social stability ahead of the upcoming 2025 World Games in Chengdu, just a few miles away from Jiangyou where the anti-bullying protests broke out. In prioritizing an unblemished international image over social justice, local officials have narrowed the space for public expression to the point of suffocation, treating legitimate public demands as risks to be contained.
What concerns us is the increasingly instrumentalized approach the Chinese government has adopted in managing public sentiment. The term “public opinion” is increasingly becoming hollowed out in China, deliberately pathologizing normal public expression.
Ironically, "public opinion" has instead become a means of monitoring and suppressing public expression. This has further heightened the hostility between state and society, making meaningful interaction and resolution of social conflicts nearly impossible.
Under the logic of “stability above all,” every social issue becomes an image crisis, and every dissonant response is viewed as a disruption. This approach not only stifled resolution, but also covered up human rights abuses with manufactured calm and peace. Not only did the victim of the bullying suffer secondary harm from the police’s brutal crackdown, but ordinary citizens who came to support the bullied teenager were also indiscriminately beaten by the police.
We call on the International World Games Association to take a clear and public stance. As a renowned international event, the World Games cannot take place on soil where civic rights are suppressed and voices are erased. The spirit of sport must not serve as a cover for institutional violence or be used to legitimize repression.
From: An independent collective monitoring grassroots resistance and civil rights in China