Uniformed officers in China bash man on the street for failing to produce his ID
Victim suffers seven broken ribs and a bleeding lung, and is told he will have permanent complications from his injuries
A man in southern China was cuffed, trampled and beaten in broad daylight by half a dozen uniformed men who broke seven of his ribs and caused internal bleeding in his right lung after he failed to produce his ID on request, mainland media report.
It was unclear whether the uniformed men who beat up Li Gang, the victim, were regular or part time police, or notorious “urban management officers” hired by city governments to patrol streets and markets to remove beggars and illegal hawkers, often by brutal means, the Information Times reported.
Li had apparently answered back to an officer who yelled at him for driving his electric bike through a crowd on the streets of Dongguan in late May.
When Li was asked for his ID and couldn’t produce it, the officer knocked Li off his bike and started to punch him and twist his arms.
While onlookers pleaded with the officer to stop, four or five more uniformed men arrived at the scene and tied Li’s hands, wrestled him to the ground and began kicking him on the street.
The officers then took Li to the Dongcheng police station for a further round of violent interrogation, the report said.
Li’s wife, Fu Xue, later took him to the hospital for what she thought would be some light bandaging for a few bruises.
She was shocked to discover that her husband had suffered seven broken ribs – five on the left side and two on the right – which caused a haemothorax, or internal bleeding, in his right lung.
When reporters phoned the police station on May 31, they were told by staff that it was “inconvenient” for the officers to be interviewed.
On Monday, a week after the incident, doctors were still unable to tell Li when he would be discharged from the hospital.
However, they warned that he would have to deal with complications from his injuries for the rest of his life, long after the ribs had healed.
The Information Times reported that the police station chief only visited Li once in hospital. He agreed to meet Li’s medical expenses “so long as it was in one bill”. The station also refused to produce an injury assessment as requested by Li’s family, the paper reported.
