Verdict upheld against man who defamed murder victim's mother

The one-and-a-half-year prison sentence for a man who insulted and defamed the mother of a murdered Chinese student was upheld in a recent retrial, the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court announced on Tuesday.

On November 3, 2016, a 24-year-old female Chinese student named Jiang Ge was murdered by Chen Shifeng, the ex-boyfriend of her roommate, Liu Xin, during her stay in Japan while studying. One year later, Chen was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Tokyo District Court.

The case stirred strong emotions in China and sparked controversy online. Tan Bin, who was known on Weibo as Posh-Bin, was among those who took a stand against the victim's mother, Jiang Qiulian.

According to the court, on February 25, 2018, Tan posted a series of comics created by others on his Weibo account, which caricatured the poor mother and insulted her. The comics had been viewed more than 24,600 times.

Between September 25 and October 18, he posted two articles on Weibo which indicated that Jiang Ge was cursed to die in connection with her mother and asked the mother to keep quiet or commit suicide in the titles. The two postings were respectively viewed over 8,000 times and 4,000 times.

On the top of these articles, he placed the portrait of deceased Jiang Ge and marked it with terms like "bitch" and "deserve to die." He described Jiang Qiulian as "hussy" and "poor but detestable person" in the articles and insulted her.

Between September 24 and October 30, 2018, and between March 12 and 15, 2019, he made 17 short postings on Weibo, viewed more than 43,700 times, to abuse the mother, calling her "a canker on society" and "a scumbag."

He also fabricated stories about the murder. An earlier judgement showed that Chen wanted to kill his ex-girlfriend Liu and Jiang Ge was an innocent victim who happened to be at the scene. However, in a story Tan posted between February 12, 2018 and March 15, 2019 to give "some insights on Jiang Qiulian's lies," he alleged that Jiang Ge was Chen's rival in love, and this was why she was killed. The story was viewed over 340,000 times.

In the first instance, the Putuo District People's Court sentenced Tan to one and a half years in jail for crimes of insult and defamation.

However, both Jiang Qiulian and Tan later filed separate appeals to the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court.

Jiang Qiulian claimed that Tan should also be charged for falsely claiming that she cheated others out of donations over her daughter's death and the Putuo court didn't confront this issue.

Tan tried to seek a lenient penalty by claiming that he learned about this case on Weibo in 2018 and his bias towards the mother was influenced by others. He said he just followed others who condemned Jiang Qiulian and the comics and articles were all materials he collected from postings on Weibo.

He apologized to Jiang and hoped to compensate her.

The Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court said the Internet is never a "land beyond the law." Although everyone can have his or her own voice online, they should respect the law and cannot infringe others' legal rights.

In Jiang's appeal, an investigation showed that Jiang raised more than 290,000 yuan (US$43,259) from an online platform to pay attorney fees, certification fees, translation and transport fees, which added up to over 300,000 yuan. But meanwhile, she received donations from the public into her Alipay account, WeChat account and bank account. So far she hasn't provided evidences on how she used this money, so the court could not confirm whether Tan had defamed her.

But the court also warned that Tan should not speculate and criticize others without evidence.

In the end, the court rejected both appeals and upheld the previous ruling.