Man is detained, prosecuted, and fined for pilfering protected plants.
By Kevin Schoenmakers
When a farmer in central China saw wild orchids on his way back from working in the fields, he likely never imagined that picking three flowers and bringing them home would land him in front of a judge.
But a county court in Henan province recently sentenced the man, surnamed Qin, to a suspended three-year jail sentence and ordered him to pay a 3,000-yuan ($435) fine for the crime of illegally picking nationally protected plants, local newspaper Henan Legal Daily reported Wednesday.
Qin had earlier been detained for seven days after forest police found out about his orchid-picking. But when an official at the Lushi County procuratorate, the government department that serves the roles of both investigator and prosecutor, realized Qin’s actions constituted a breach of criminal law, they advised police to open a legal case against him.
Yang Miaowei, a section head at the Lushi County procuratorate, told Henan Legal Daily that China protects its environment with rigid laws, and that people with little legal awareness can easily violate the law by accident.
The realization that picking three flowers can constitute a crime had a created “an enormous shock in Qin’s thinking,” the article said, and the event has given the community “a profound lesson in the rule of law.”
Editor: David Paulk.
(Header image: A boat orchid photographed at an exhibition in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, April 11, 2017. Wang Jianzhong/VCG)
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