Guangdong Police Tape Up Mouths of 23 Suspects

Thinking out of the box doesn't exactly come easily to the average Chinese, and given what happened when police in Huizhou arrested 23 men in connection with over 100 thefts, Chinese people are like the proverbial dog with two bones: An ingenious solution presents itself, but then creates more problems than it solves because no one thinks ahead.

Which is exactly what happened with the coppers realised that they couldn't actually understand what the suspects were saying because of their thick accent.  This kind of stuff happens and lot in China, for the uneducated western reader it's best to think of China as a collection of small countries grouped together under the banner of "The PRC" rather than a country that shares the same spoken language.  The solution?  Tape up the mouths of the prisoners rather than let them chat together and figure out what their story is when it comes to the interrogation.  Sadly, the pictures ended up on the Chinese intertubes, and then out onto the real Internet.  

Of course the idea that they have to improve their interrogation skills never actually occurred to the police, who will probably be releasing a statement soon saying "it's not our fault if we ask stupid questions during the interrogation of prisoners, this was the best way of not getting stupid answers.".  The actual excuse given wasn't far from the truth when the police claimed it was done to protect the rights of the prisoners to stop them confessing to the crimes "accidentally".

Here's hoping that no one on the UN Human Rights Council saw the photos.

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