By Kent Ewing, Asia Times Online, June 2, 2009 -

HONG KONG – Until recently, Deng Yujiao seemed an unlikely hero. The 21-year-old pedicurist worked in obscurity at the Xiongfeng Hotel in central Hubei province’s Badong county. The hotel’s Dream City leisure center is probably a euphemism for a brothel, but she was known only as a toenail cutter there until May 10.

On that night, she says she was assaulted by two government officials, one of whom slapped her repeatedly with wads of cash while insisting that she have sex with him. When the two men pushed her onto a sofa a second time, she recalls, she reached into her bag for a knife, an instrument she used in her trade, and began slashing away.

One of the officials, Deng Guida, the 44-year-old head of business promotion for the town of Yesanguan and the apparent would-be sex client, died from his wounds; his unnamed colleague, also 44, survived.

While there was little public sympathy for the dead man or his injured cohort, suddenly a previously unknown pedicurist working in a seedy hotel was being hailed by Chinese netizens as a champion of women’s rights and hero of the underclass. Women’s groups, including the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, took up her cause, and even state media picked up her story, which has become a national sensation.

Until last week, that is, when the country’s censor tsar, jittery about public ire manifested in any form as the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches, decided to pull the plug.

“Hubei’s case concerning Deng Yujiao,” a gag order from the Central Publicity Department stated, “has been under judicial investigation in accordance with the law, and news organizations should halt following up the case temporarily and call back journalists working in Hubei immediately.”

Since the department issued this edict, two journalists – Kong Pu of the Beijing Times and Wei Yi of the Nangfang People Weekly – have reportedly been beaten and detained as they attempted to interview Deng Yujiao’s grandmother, and Yesanguan has been sealed off by local authorities……. ( More details from Asia Times Online)

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