Beijing, February 25 (reporter Zhang Cong): The reporter learned from the press conference of the Supreme People's Procuratorate recently that the current network crime is a frequent and high incidence trend. From January to November 2023, the procuratorial organs will prosecute 280000 people for various types of network crimes, up 35.5% year on year, accounting for 18.8% of all criminal crimes. Insult, slander and other traditional minor crimes have shown amplification effect and increased harmfulness through network communication.

In recent years, with the development of network communication, network violence crimes have become increasingly prominent. Abuse, slander, slander, privacy violations and other acts on the network have seriously violated the personality rights of others, disrupted the network order, and affected the public's sense of security.

In order to punish cyber violence crimes in accordance with the law, the procuratorial organs accurately apply the public prosecution procedure and effectively punish cyber insult and slander crimes. Different from traditional crimes, cyber violence has a wide range of information dissemination, great social harm, and difficult influence elimination. However, victims are often difficult to provide evidence and safeguard their rights, so it is difficult to achieve rights relief through private prosecution. In this regard, the procuratorial organ actively adapts to the higher demand of the masses for criminal protection of the dignity of personality in cyberspace, and applies the public prosecution procedure in accordance with the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 246 of the Criminal Law for cyber insult and slander crimes that seriously endanger social order and national interests. From January to November 2023, the procuratorial organ will prosecute 39 people for crimes of insult and slander in accordance with the law, work hard to support the victims and resolutely show their swords to cyber criminals. In recent years, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has given full play to the advantages of procuratorial integration, tightened the case quality standards for cyber violence crimes that are widely concerned by the society, and supervised the handling of such cyber violence cases as the defamation case of Hangzhou women taking express delivery.

At the same time, many of the current 14 statutory areas of prosecutorial public interest litigation involve cyberspace. On the basis of well handling cases in the legal field, the procuratorial organs actively explore solutions to public interest litigation in response to people's strong complaints about online violence, online rumors, bad information on the Internet and other problems in the governance of online black ash. In September 2023, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Punishing Cyber Violence Crimes in accordance with the Law, which clearly stipulates that if cyber violence harms social and public interests, the People's Procuratorate can file a public interest lawsuit to the People's Court in accordance with the law.

At present, the Supreme People's Procuratorate is guiding the local procuratorial organs to study and judge the violations that have seriously violated the personality rights and interests of many citizens, so as to carry out public interest litigation supervision. In the next step, the Supreme People's Procuratorate will continue to strengthen the handling of public interest litigation in cyberspace governance, study and create judicial rules for procuratorial public interest litigation in cyberspace public interest damage assessment, repair and prevention, and help create a safe network environment.

People's Daily (February 26, 2024, edition 10)

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