CHINA Henan, tough hand against protests by current account holders defrauded by banks

Reuters news agency report: A businessman has been detained for four months just for protesting in Zhengzhou to recover his savings. A scandal that has affected 600,000 people in this province. Prolonged detention is unheard of in China for this type of action, but the past two years have seen a sharp rise in economic protests.

Beijing (/Agencies) – He had traveled to the Chinese city of Zhengzhou to seek compensation after the bank account in which he had all his savings was frozen. Four months later, she still hasn’t returned home. This is the story of Ou Yangyun, a 39-year-old small businessman from Changsha, reported today by Reuters news agency. he never returned. Ou, along with a dozen other victims of one of China’s biggest banking scandals, had gathered in front of a railway station shouting: “Henan banks, give back our savings!”, as images of the protest show staged in February.

The group had been wandering the streets of Zhengzhou for about 30 minutes, until one of several unidentified men who had been following them shouted “shut down the net!” and the protesters were pushed onto a bus and handed over to a police station, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident. Most were released after several days of detention, but Ou and two other defrauded account holders are still being held by police, the two people said.

This is an emblematic case of the ongoing repression of the numerous economic protests that have proliferated in China since 2022, carried out by some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who have lost their homes in the real estate crisis or have been victims of fraud scams. investment. The case in question began about two years ago, when some 600,000 people lost their savings in a $4.2 billion fraud involving four banks in Henan province, sparking concern among some analysts about the stability of rural banks. The scandal and subsequent protests were not directly caused by China’s economic slowdown. However, the unusual harshness with which Ou and the other two people have been treated may reflect the authorities’ sensitivity to growing dissent related to financial difficulties, two experts told Reuters. It is common for people to be detained during economic protests, but they are usually released within a few days, unlike those who participate in political protests, who are often detained for months, the two analysts noted.

The China Dissent Monitor, a project of the Washington-based human rights group Freedom House, reported a 127% year-on-year increase in the number of economic protests studied, up to 805 in the fourth quarter of 2023. These include protests of workers for unpaid wages; from property buyers whose apartments have not been built; of investors and pensioners stripped of their money.