Last November, Hebei police took away Sun Dawu, the founder of the Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group in Hebei Province who is known as an “outspoken entrepreneur. They also took “his wife Liu Huiru and a few others for investigation and accused them of “slandering and disturbing the social order. At the same time, officials from Hubei province dispatched 29 teams to the Dawu Group and took over the management of the company. The Dawu Group Legal Director Yang Bin revealed on Weibo on April 22 that the authorities have issued an official arrest notice to Sun Dawu, who by that time, had been in custody for more than five months. Six other senior officials of the company also received arrest notices. Sun was charged with crimes including illegally misleading the public to collect deposits, slandering and disturbing the social order, illegal mining, illegal occupation of farmland and more. Sun is currently being detained at the Hebei Gaobeidian Detention Center. Yang wrote that a number of signs indicate that the investigative agency is speeding up the pace of the case.
Netizens posted comments calling the charges ridiculous and said that the officials can always come up with charges if they want to. [Editor’s note: The Chinese idiom 欲加之罪何患無辭 is applicable. It means, “He who has a mind to beat his dog will easily find a stick.”]
Sun is another outspoken person who was imprisoned for speaking up against the current regime. For more information, please see the previous published briefing on Sun’s arrest: Four Reasons Why the CCP Arrested Farmer Businessman Sun Dawu, http://chinascope.org/?s=sun+dawu
Source: Apple Daily, April 23, 2021
https://tw.appledaily.com/international/20210423/7S7BDLX6Z5HLZIUYDLZHGTRC5Y/