Chinese man who cut off finger to protest innocence wins apology

A teenage van driver who cut off the tip of his finger to protest his innocence has exposed a Shanghai police sting operation to trap unwary motorists. Sun Zhongjie, 19, was arrested minutes after giving a lift to a man who forced him to stop by standing in the middle of a narrow road.

He told Mr Sun that he was travelling to a nearby cement factory but there were no buses and he could not find a taxi. Without waiting for an answer, the man climbed in beside Mr Sun, who took pity on him and drove off. Mr Sun said: “I started the car. Minutes later at an intersection a van came up and stopped in front of me.”

The man leapt out of his vehicle, tossed a 10 yuan (90p) note towards him and ran off. Mr Sun then discovered that the vehicle in front of him contained traffic inspection officials cracking down on unlicensed taxis. They took Mr Sun’s mobile telephone and ordered him to sign a confession that he was operating an unlicensed taxi. Mr Sun refused and asked for his telephone so that he could dial 110, the Chinese equivalent of 999. The officials replied that he was already in the hands of 110.



Only after they refused to allow him to go to the toilet did Mr Sun finally sign the confession. That evening he cut off the tip of his little finger and informed the local newspapers of his case.

The report sparked public outrage and garnered nationwide sympathy for Mr Sun, who had arrived in Shanghai only two days before the incident, to take up a job with a construction company. A survey by the website of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, put the entrapment at the top of a list of public incidents that had damaged government credibility in the first nine months of this year.

The furore was enough to trigger an investigation by the Shanghai authorities. It found that the man who climbed into Mr Sun’s van had been involved in a similar incident in which the driver was fined 10,000 yuan. A rare and embarrassing climbdown followed. “We, as a district government, must admit the mistake and apologise to the media and the public,” said a senior Shanghai official. Mr Sun, who will receive compensation for his ordeal, wept when he heard the outcome. “I’m happy,” he said, but added that he would not stop again to help someone on the street.