China judges shot dead in courthouse

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China judges shot dead in courthouse

June 2, 2010 08:20:10 am

[JURIST] Three judges were killed and three people were injured Tuesday in a Chinese courthouse by a security officer at a local bank. The shooter, Zhu Jun, was the head of security at a local Postal Savings Bank in Hunan province and is alleged to have been upset over the division of marital assets [Xinhua report] by the Lingling District People's Court in his divorce three years prior. The judges who were killed were not involved in the divorce. Zhu entered the courthouse just after ten in the morning with an automatic weapon and two pistols, opening fire as he did so. Private gun ownership is illegal [WSJ report] in China, but Zhu confiscated the weapons from subordinates, claiming they were to be inspected by superiors. Three of his subordinates are being investigated for dereliction of duty [Shanghai Daily report] in relation to the incident. The shooting comes on the tail of a series of school attacks [Economist report], in which lone men entered grade schools wielding knives and other weapons, attacking school children. The series of incidents, which officials have said are unrelated, have left dozens of children dead and scores more injured.

Judges have also been victims of violent attacks in other countries. In April, a Moscow City Court [official website] judge known for presiding over cases involving neo-Nazi groups was killed [JURIST report] while leaving his apartment. The murder of Judge Eduard Chuvashov was suspected to be a contract killing in light of the death threats he faced after presiding over the trials of members of neo-Nazi gangs. In November, a Somali judge known for jailing suspected pirates [JURIST news archive], human traffickers, and Islamist insurgents was shot dead [JURIST report] while leaving a mosque in the Puntland city of Bossaso. Judge Mohamed Abdi Aware of the Puntland high court and the Puntland Supreme Judicial Council, had recently jailed four members of the al-Shabaab Islamist group and had sentenced 12 suspected pirates to terms ranging from three to eight years. Last June, Aza Gazgireyeva, deputy head of the Supreme Court in Russia's Ingushetia province [official website, in Russian; BBC backgrounder] was gunned down [JURIST report] while taking her children to school in the town of Nazran. It is believed that Gazgireyeva may have been killed for her role in investigating an attack on Ingush police forces by Chechen militants in 2004.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.