CHINA'S cyber citizens have
once again taken to the Internet to protest a judge's decision to convict and
sentence a teenage girl accused of murdering her would-be rapist, a 50-year-old
man who also threatened to kill her.
The victim, 19-year-old
Xuan, was handed a four-year jail term after the court found her guilty of
intentional homicide in the death of Yang, whom she accused of trying to
sexually assault her at his home in Guangdong province in May 2011.
Xuan told the Guangzhou
Intermediate People's Court that she was unable to purchase a train ticket to
Xiamen (in Fujian province, about 850km from Guangdong) and was wandering
aimlessly at the station when she met Yang.
She followed him back to his
place when he offered her a room for the night. At his house, Yang told Xuan he
wanted to have sex with her, but when she said no, he threatened to kill her if
she refused.
In a bid to escape, she
grabbed a knife and stabbed him. Xuan confessed to the court that before she
ran away, she went back to Yang's body and stabbed him in the head several
times to make sure he wouldn't be able to attack her.
In handling down his ruling,
the judge concurred that Xuan's initial reaction was in self-defence. But he
added, "She later committed the offence of intentional killing after she
continued to stab Yang, who had been seriously wounded and had fallen to the
ground dying."
Xuan's punishment sparked
off a storm of criticism from China's netizens, many of whom demanded justice
for Xuan.
"She was merely
defending herself in a 'you die or I die' situation," said one commentator
on Weibo. "In such situation, if I don't go all out to protect myself,
then the person who dies will be me," said another user, Li Xiaoyou.
Yu Ji also posted on Weibo:
"In that panicky moment, how could one person judge whether the man,
although injured, would not wake up and hurt her again or not?"
Other netizens complained of
the harsh sentencing even though Xuan received the lightest possible
punishment. "Four years jail is just too long for a teenager. She could be
placed on probation," said lawyer Yue Cheng. (China Daily)
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