Five men arrested over naked protest outside Hunan court
Staff Reporter
2015-06-10
The men protest in the nude outside the Hunan Provincial Higher People's Court on the morning of June 8. (Internet photo)
Five men have been arrested after protesting naked outside the Hunan Provincial Higher People's Court on Monday morning, reports the Hunan-based web portal Rednet.cn.
The report said the men were part of a larger group of about 10 people who congregated outside the gates of the courthouse in the morning. At around 8:26 am, five of them stripped completely naked and held up protest signs. Despite the wet weather, the show attracted a lot of onlookers, many of whom took photos with their smartphones.
Court police persuaded the men to put their clothes back on at around 8:45 am and took them into custody shortly after.
The five men were reportedly instructed to carry out the protest by a Hunan man named Li Tianmin, who has been embroiled in a long-running court case involving a utilities development dispute.
Li first brought the case before the local Yongzhou Intermediate People's Court and won, but the defendants appealed to the Hunan Provincial Higher People's Court, which sent the case back to Yongzhou for a retrial and resulted in the decision being overturned.
Li appealed to the higher court but failed, prompting him to take the case all the way to the Supreme People's Court, China's highest court, where it failed again. Refusing to give up, Li applied to the Hunan Provincial People's Procuratorate for prosecutorial supervision, but the application was denied.
The five men are not believed to have been involved in the case and were simply hired by Li to make a scene and attract attention, the report said.
Hunan's public security bureau has opened an investigation into the incident.
