Wei Wenhua (魏文华 is the Chinese spelling of his name) happened on a confrontation in Hubei, a central Chinese province, between city inspectors and residents protesting against the dumping of waste near their homes. Being the "citizen journalist" that he was, Wei quickly took out his phone with the intention to film the whole fight, most likely to later upload it and post it on his blog. According to the CNN, that's the moment when over 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, beating him up for about five minutes. The ambulance that was called and that took him to the hospital was not able to get on time to save his life: he was dead on arrival at a Tianmen hospital.

Of course, there were waves around this, an international press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders protested: "He was beaten to death for doing something which is becoming more and more common and which was a way to expose law-enforcement officers who keep on overstepping their limits." The online community also condemned the beating and so has all the media, but the only result was that Qi Zhengjun, the chief of the urban administration bureau in Tianmen, lost his job over this.

As Philipp Lenssen of blogoscoped.com observed, the Chinese authorities "are suppressing reports on cases like these by convincing internet companies (like Google) to self-censor their content." I find this truly disturbing, the way they dealt with the problem. They fired one when 50 administered the fatal beating, an investigation is being conducted just because the press have voiced against the way things are handled and most likely it will drag on until all of this is forgotten.

Leaning against Google seems to me to be the last straw needed, but I guess there's not a lot people can do over there, and this is in fact a statement of what happens if you try to do something against the government. No, I'm not saying that it's a political act, but the fact that they have the power and will to act the way they did should give some clues to those who really want to see them.