A statement endorsing China's human rights violations made by a government official in Jiangsu province of China has captured the eyes of two million Internet users since it was posted online on Sunday.
The unidentified official of a complaint bureau in Suzhou was caught on camera while he was making the surprising statement, according to the South China Morning Post.
"If the police don't beat people, what's the point of keeping them?" the newspaper quoted the official as saying.
"The police are the government's violence machine," said the official.
Generating two-million hits, the statement in the video has drawn ferocious criticism against police violence in the country, which human rights activists often describe as brutal and inhuman.
"He told the truth. The police are the government's thugs," said an internet user on his Weibo microblog.
Even in school textbooks in mainland China, police violence is something that has always been justified by the government, according to the Chinese newspaper.
Reports said that the official's remarks took place when a resident of an apartment building complained about the developer but there was no detailed information about the incident.
Noticing the remarks had gone rival on the Internet, the official was ordered to "reflect deeply" but authorities refused to reveal the official's identity, according to the Nanfang Daily newspaper, Tuesday.
"Authorities just asked him to 'reflect'? That's it? They should conduct a deeper investigation," South China Morning Post quoted another Internet user as saying.
Another person on Weibo criticized China's Complaint Bureau saying, "The bureau has done no good for people. What is it for? It should be abolished."
"For instance, extorting confessions by torture, which results in serious injury or death. According to the penal code, the police officers would have to be charged with causing intentional injuries or manslaughter. But in practice, no Chinese police officer has ever been condemned to death for torturing somebody to death," reported worldcrunch, a news portal, which translates top foreign outlets into English.
"The police are like a vicious dog kept by a bully. The more the master depends on his dog, the more he feeds it delicacies and gets it to bark at the passers-by," said the news portal.
