On June 22, three farmers surnamed Li from Tanghe County, Nanyang City, Henan Province received a non-prosecution decision from the Fangcheng County Procuratorate. At this point, the bitter experience of receiving compensation for reporting pollution from Nanyang ×× Ceramics Co., Ltd. located near the village of 3 people in Tanghe County was sentenced to extortion by the court, and then embarked on a seven-year appeal process. It has finally ended.
▲ On June 22, the Fangcheng County Procuratorate of Nanyang City officially decided not to prosecute three persons named Li in the extortion case. Decide.
"Ceramic Information" combed through relevant information and found that this case has attracted in-depth reports from media such as "Beijing Youth Daily" and "Huashang Daily" in the past year.
Porcelain factories continue to pollute
Villagers reported and received compensation
In 2013, Nanyang ×× Ceramics Co., Ltd. built a factory in Tanghe County and put it into operation. In the first phase, a polished tile production line was built. However, the factory was built on the expropriated farmland in the village where three of Li's people lived, and it was only the same as the existing farmland. Separated by a wall. Since the year it was put into operation, villagers have not only noticed an unpleasant smell in the air, but also a significant reduction in wheat production and even partial failure.
The villagers immediately began to report to the environmental protection department that in January 2014, a report issued by the Tanghe County Environmental Monitoring Station after monitoring the company's factory showed that the concentration of particulate matter in the exhaust gas emitted by the company had far exceeded the measurement range of the instrument. It is a serious violation.
In June 2014, some villagers began to petition the relevant local departments to defend their rights. However, the Tanghe County Environmental Protection Bureau also determined that the ceramic company had committed many illegal acts and that the emissions seriously exceeded the standard. Therefore, it required the company to stop production for rectification and imposed an 8-year fine. A fine of 10,000 yuan was imposed, and in August of that year, the company's pollution problems were listed and supervised by the Nanyang Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
However, until February 2015, all the decisions made by the Tanghe County Environmental Protection Bureau had not been fully implemented. According to public information, from 2015 to 2019, the company had a total of 8 administrative penalties from the environmental protection department, covering unauthorized For serious environmental violations such as using ditches without anti-seepage measures to transport and store phenol water sediments, the highest penalty was a fine of 210,000 yuan due to excessive sulfur dioxide concentration.
▲Ceramic factory involved
Between 2013 and 2014, the ceramic company compensated nearly 100 local villagers for the pollution, ranging from 500 to 2,000 yuan per mu of cultivated land. After receiving the compensation, some villagers began to accept the fact of being contaminated and gave up. Participated in rights protection, but Li and three others still insisted on safeguarding their rights.
In April 2015, Li and three other people reached a compensation agreement with Nanyang ×× Ceramics Co., Ltd., and the three people were given a one-time compensation of 120,000 yuan. The three people can no longer pursue the case for any reason or report the pollution problem to the relevant departments. .
Require environmental protection departments to stop pollution
Additional compensation accused of extortion
After the compensation agreement was reached, the pollution from Nanyang XX Ceramics Co., Ltd. continued. Li and three others continued to report to relevant departments and asked the company to stop pollution. The content of the response is that the Tanghe County Environmental Protection Bureau does not comply with the law and protects and shields polluting enterprises.
In June 2015, Li and the other three signed a compensation agreement with the ceramic factory again. The agreement showed that after May 2015, the three people continued to petition the relevant departments, so they signed an agreement to give the three people a total of 80,000 yuan in compensation, to be paid in two installments, requiring the three people not to petition the department for any reason. The company’s environmental issues. The first payment was 50,000 yuan to the three people, and IOUs were written for the remaining 30,000 yuan, agreeing to repay within two months.
On the agreed date to pay off the compensation, the three were notified to collect the compensation from the company, but then they were criminally detained by the Tanghe County Public Security Bureau. The three were arrested with the approval of the Tanghe County People's Procuratorate on suspicion of extortion.
The Tanghe County People's Court ruled: The three persons first used the illegal possession of other people's property as an excuse, and used the means of continuous reporting and accusations to government departments on the grounds that the victim company produced pollution, blackmailed the victim company, and forced it to negotiate and pay with it. The amount of property was huge, and his behavior constituted the crime of extortion.
Among the three, two were sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for three years, and fined 3,000 yuan for extortion; one was sentenced to extortion and exempted from criminal punishment.
However, the defenders of the three people's appeal believed that the ceramic factory should bear the liability for the compensation received by the three people, so the signing of the compensation agreement was legal. However, the contents of the three persons’ letters and petitions were that the County Environmental Protection Bureau was protecting polluting enterprises and was passing the buck.Inaction, slow action, and shielding and protection of polluting enterprises do not threaten the ceramic factory, so it cannot be deemed that the ceramic factory has been extorted.
After that, Li and the other three successively filed for retrial and appealed to the Nanyang Intermediate Court, but the original verdict was upheld. In December 2019, after the three people continued to appeal, the Henan Provincial Higher People's Court made a retrial decision on the case. It believed that the facts that the original judgment found the three guilty of extortion were unclear and the evidence was insufficient, and ordered the Nanyang Intermediate People's Court to retrial. Subsequently, the Nanyang Intermediate People's Court sent the case back to Tanghe County for retrial. However, the three lost trust in the Tanghe County Court, which had convicted them, and filed a recusal application. The jurisdiction of the case was transferred to the Fangcheng County Court.
It was not until June 22 that the Fangcheng County Procuratorate officially issued a decision not to prosecute, believing that the three people's behavior in reporting pollution and receiving compensation did not constitute a crime of extortion, and the matter came to an end.
[This article is compiled from "Dahe.com", "Beijing Youth Daily", and "Huashang Daily"]
(This article is reproduced from Ceramic Information)
