During the Mid-Autumn festival, several of the major legal Wechat accounts carried articles deploring the latest report of violence against judges in a Shandong bank (which occurred on 8 September) (and making caustic comments about the local authorities), attracting hundreds of thousands of page views.  An official statement about the incident has now been issued by the central authorities decrying “no matter what the reason, violent resistance to law in any country is very serious legal event, it has touched the base line of the rule of law, respect of the dignity of the individual, it is about the authority of the law, if even in a judge’s personal safety can not be guaranteed in the society, what is the rule of law?”

A video of the incident (from which the above photo was taken) has been circulating of the incident, which originally had been deleted from Tencent video but now has been restored.The video shows two judges from the enforcement division of a county court at a local bank being attacked by personnel from the defendant company. The video states that the judges were taken to “headquarters,” with one kept as a captive and the other taken back to the bank.  A subsequent local government statement said that the investigations were continuing and the two judges were safely escorted from the county.

The official statement, made first by the Supreme People’s Court on its Weibo account , was subsequently reprinted in other official media, including on the front page of the People’s Court Daily and the website of the Central Political Legal Commission.

Presumably social media was flooded with thousands of messages from local judges on the lack of respect for the judiciary by the public and officials.

Comments on public accounts include:

 Wang Dong, prosecutor, author of CU检说法: Today enforcement division judges were beat up, maybe tomorrow it will be the criminal, civil court, and administrative division judges.

Today  Shandong judges were beaten, maybe tomorrow it will be Anhui, Henan, or Zhejiang judges.

Today those who were beaten were judges executing their public duties, maybe tomorrow it will be public prosecutors (procurators), police, or lawyers.

Everyone will not always be just a spectator.

If we say that the safety of judges, prosecutors, and police officers in the execution of public duties is not guaranteed, how can we expect them to protect the safety of social justice yet.

And a last sentence to say: If the judge can not feel justice when he encounters violent resistance to law, how can he make people feel justice in every case?

From a retired intermediate court judge, published on Legal Readings (法律读品):

If there is no limit on public power, judicial power loses its authority (公权无抑遏，司法失权威).