[Video] CityWalk~Let’s go! Check in on this ancient map
"There are 410 statutory areas for procuratorial public interest litigation. Follow this map to find stories about procuratorial duties!" Early in the morning of May 15, a cartoon-style "ancient style map of public interest litigation" was unveiled at Exit 4 of Tongjing Road Station on Metro Line 2 in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Pedestrians stopped and took out their phones to scan the code to see the stories behind the map.
The "Ancient Style Map of Public Interest Litigation" is the sixth season subway poster launched by the Suzhou Procuratorate. In order to fully introduce the public interest litigation procuratorial functions to the public, each story picture on the poster is equipped with a QR code of related news reports.
"Public interest litigation continues to grow outward and take root downward, getting closer to the daily life of firewood, rice, oil and salt." On the WeChat public account of Suzhou Procuratorate of Jiangsu Province, the editor used beautiful lines of poetry to interpret the poster. The "introduction, development, turn and conclusion" in the poem is exactly the melody of the Suzhou Procuratorate's performance of public interest litigation prosecution.
Clues are the source of public interest litigation. As early as 2008, when the public interest litigation system had not yet taken root, the Suzhou Procuratorate received a visit from a citizen complaining about an act that harmed the public interest. At that time, the image of the rockery designed by I.M. Pei for the Suzhou Museum was used in a magazine advertisement by a certain company. After seeing it, the citizen took the initiative to report the supervision clues to the former Pingjiang District Procuratorate of Suzhou City. In this regard, the procuratorate supported the Suzhou Museum in filing a civil lawsuit. This was the first exploration of the Suzhou Procuratorate in conducting public interest litigation based on reports from the masses.
During the Spring Festival of 2011, a house owned by Lao Tao in Gusu District of Suzhou was severely squeezed by the Changmen City Wall, and even a loud noise was heard. The clue he reported to the prosecutor kicked off the Gusu District Procuratorate's "Prosecution City Wall Protection" public welfare protection special action. After four years of procuratorial investigation and two years of legislative argumentation, in March 2018, the "Suzhou Ancient City Wall Protection Regulations" and the "Suzhou National Historical and Cultural City Protection Regulations" were officially implemented.
In August 2018, the Gusu District Procuratorate and Suzhou Daily jointly launched the "Public Interest Protection Alliance" column, which became a media link for the procuratorate to collect clues for public interest litigation from the society.
The Suzhou Municipal Procuratorate issued the "Reward Measures for Reporting Clues in Public Interest Litigation Cases" in 2021. Xiao Luo, a senior student at Changshu Institute of Technology, reported the clue that there were cracks in the tombstone of the "Two Martyrs" in Changshu, which facilitated the restoration of cultural relics and was rewarded 500 yuan.
Enthusiastic public figures like Xiao Luo have joined the "Yixinweigong" volunteer team in recent years. In February 2022, the "Yixinweigong" procuratorial cloud platform developed and built by the Supreme People's Procuratorate was piloted in Jiangsu. Today, there are 1,580 "Yixinweigong" volunteers in Suzhou Procuratorate.
Now that we have clues, can the procuratorate take them up and handle them well? It is very important for the public interest litigation prosecution to perform its duties accurately.
Geng Guanghang, assistant prosecutor of the Suzhou Industrial Park Procuratorate, analyzed 276 cases of telecommunications fraud and assisting information network criminal activities handled by the procuratorate since 2022 and found that most of the people involved were young, low-educated, and low-income people, and a quarter of them were deceived and involved in crimes due to exposure to illegal online recruitment information. Subsequently, the WeChat public account "Employment Bar Szhou" was dug out for publishing job information containing rhetoric such as "listening to classes" and "filling the field" and with unknown units and abnormally high salaries. The procuratorate issued a procuratorial recommendation to the human resources and social security department, took the lead in organizing consultations with human resources and social security, public security, cybersecurity and other units, and went to industry associations to carry out compliance guidance, promoting the investigation of 102 institutions and units, the closure of 20 illegal intermediaries, and the imposition of 5 administrative penalties.
In February 2023, the Kunshan Municipal Procuratorate found in handling cases that food delivery riders in the area generally did not sign labor contracts and were unwilling to pay social security, which put them at a disadvantage in the event of disputes such as work-related injuries. After the relevant clues were designated by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Jiangsu Provincial Procuratorate took the lead in setting up a special task force with the Suzhou and Kunshan procuratorates, which eventually prompted the relevant companies to rectify and cancel the individual business registration for the food delivery riders.
Subsequently, the Kunshan Municipal Procuratorate fed back the deep-seated problems exposed by the case and a series of suggestions to the relevant departments. In May 2023, the human resources and social security department began to explore the pilot of occupational injury protection for new business workers, focusing on the takeaway rider group, and promoted relevant companies to pay occupational injury insurance for riders. Occupational injury insurance has been fully implemented in Suzhou. So far, a total of 3,368 occupational injuries have been confirmed, benefiting nearly 2,000 new business practitioners.
In the past, prosecutors of public interest litigation brought hiking poles to the scene, and once they stuck their poles into the ground, the depth of the soil involved in the case was immediately revealed. In the past, sports shoes were the standard equipment for prosecutors of public interest litigation, "There is no supervision that does not require walking on the scene."
Technological innovation has transformed the working mechanism of public interest litigation prosecution. Today, in Suzhou Procuratorate, public interest litigation rapid detection and patrol workstations, satellite remote sensing technology, drones, unmanned boats, underwater robots, etc. have become the "technological eyes" of public interest litigation prosecutors.
In handling a series of public interest litigation cases on the Grand Canal and Taipu River, the Suzhou Procuratorate found prominent problems in the approval, transportation, and disposal of construction waste. After that, through the deployment of special supervision, research, and big data analysis, it was confirmed that the illegal dumping of construction waste had a significant negative impact on the ecological environment, navigation safety, flood safety, and urban appearance. Therefore, it took the initiative to seek data support from multiple departments such as urban management, transportation, maritime affairs, and public security, and jointly developed a big data legal supervision model for cross-regional dumping of construction waste by ships. So far, the model has found more than 200 clues of illegal dumping of production safety, and transferred 2 cases involving 13 people suspected of criminal crimes to the public security organs for filing.
"Whether it is removing 'data chimneys' or solving practical problems, the facts are proving one truth - public interest litigation is not a one-way street for lone heroes. Only benign supervision with win-win, multi-win and win-win results can continuously empower social governance." Yan Zhongliang, director of the Public Interest Litigation Procuratorate of the Jiangsu Provincial Procuratorate, said, "The road of public interest litigation should become wider and wider."
From protecting the development of rural specialty industries such as Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs and Dongting Mountain Biluochun, to working together to solve the infringement of intangible cultural heritage such as Suzhou embroidery and time-honored brands, to promoting the construction of Suzhou's barrier-free map... In recent years, Suzhou procuratorates have actively carried out public interest litigation procuratorial cooperation and expanded the "circle of friends" of co-governance and coordination. It has not only innovated cooperation mechanisms with water affairs, cultural relics and other departments, and aggregated protection in the fields of food and drug safety, production safety, barrier-free environment construction, agricultural product quality and safety, and ecological environment protection, but also jointly built a network comprehensive governance cooperation and coordination mechanism with the Internet information department, strengthened cooperation in information sharing, research and judgment, investigation, and disposal, and gathered the joint efforts of comprehensive protection of personal information and comprehensive network governance.
There is a joint government-procuratorial relationship, and there is also procuratorial coordination. The cooperation mechanism between the Xiangcheng District Procuratorate of Suzhou and the Xinwu District Procuratorate of Wuxi on the protection of the ecological environment and resources in the Taihu Lake Basin has promoted the handling of the Wangting Yuecheng Ruins Protection Case. The six procuratorates of Wujiang District, Suzhou, Qingpu District, Shanghai, and Jiashan County, Zhejiang Province, through the coordinated public interest litigation in the Yangtze River Delta, have achieved "cloud-based co-governance" of the Taihu River and the Grand Canal. The six places issued 14 procuratorial suggestions, which effectively promoted the rectification of issues such as protection of drinking water sources, illegal discharge of sewage, and garbage dumping on the shoreline.
The practice of public interest litigation prosecution has gained more vitality because of "hand in hand".
