Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/8243678

A Chinese music student was convicted on Thursday of U.S. charges that he harassed an activist who posted fliers at the Berklee College of Music in Boston supporting democracy in China and threatened to report her activities to Chinese law enforcement. A federal jury in Boston found Xiaolei Wu, 25, who sent the activist online messages saying he would chop off her hands and demanding she tear down her “reactionary posters,” guilty at the end of a four-day trial.

    •  t3rmit3   ( @t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
      3•5 months ago

      In either China or the US it will depend on many factors.

      Many cases will go un-prosecuted if there is no media attention. In China, negative public opinion is even more likely to result in a charge and conviction than in the US, due to how their judicial system works.

      Ahmaud Arbery was run down and shot in the middle of the street, in public view, and it took 3 months of the video of the murder being posted online before any of the 3 men who murdered him were charged with a crime. Local police and the local DA’s office had completely ignored the case, until media picked it up and started investigating, and that only happened because there was video.

      Or the 215 bodies buried behind a prison in Mississippi, who no one ever was informed about, and whose causes of death (many while in police custody) will probably never be fully known.

      I’d be interested to see statistics about whether a person of color in the US is treated more or less harshly than a Han (ethnic majority) Chinese person is in China; I’d wager that in terms of outcomes like sentencing, people of color in the US probably get a generally worse shake than Han Chinese people in China do, and white people a generally better shake.