Authorities in Beijing have rounded up around 100 petitioners in
recent days after they traveled to air grievances to China's parliament,
Shanghai-based activists said.
The move came as delegates to the
National People's Congress (NPC) meeting this week approved a boost in
spending on domestic security, signaling that current "stability
maintenance" security crackdowns ahead of a key leadership transition
later this year could become permanent.
Among those detained were
Shanghai petitioners Wang Zhihua, who had traveled to Beijing with
around six other people to petition the NPC's secretariat, and Yan
Meiying.
"We were detained when we got to Hutong No. 37 to the
west of the Great Hall of the People," Yan said in an interview on
Tuesday. "We were going there to deliver a letter, and they called the
local police to detain us."
She said the group was taken to
Jiujingzhuang, an unofficial "black jail" detention center where
petitioners are routinely held before being escorted back to their
hometowns by their own local officials.
"We were taken to
Jiujingzhuang where we were locked up by officials from our
representative office in Beijing," Yan said. "Now they have forced us
outside and they won't let us rent or borrow a room."
Detentions near NPC building
Police also detained a group of eight petitioners including Yu
Yiming, Li Weiqing and Zhou Miao near the NPC building, and took their
petitioning letters, promising they would be delivered.
"We
didn't get in," Zhou Miao said on Tuesday. "We got to a place inside
police lines at Xijiaomin Alley, where we were stopped by a large number
of police and armed police."
"We told them we had two motions to
table at the NPC, and they put us in the police vehicle...and then took
us to Jiujingzhuang."
She said police told them their
petitioning was illegal. "They are forcing us into this so-called
illegal petitioning," Yan said. "When we do normal petitioning, no one
pays any attention to us."
Shanghai petitioner Chang Xiong said he was also inside a "holding center" in Beijing along with 20 fellow activists.
"We have been here two days," Chang said. "There are more than 20 others here with me."
And
a 70-year-old petitioner, Zhang Shouzhen, said: "Those bandits took all
of our possessions and then started barking orders at us, treating us
like criminals."
"I can't get over it."
Activist Wang Kouma said his group had avoided detention only by staging their protest miles from the Great Hall of the People.
"During
the NPC parliamentary session, there are police stationed every couple
of paces," Wang said. "There are police, armed police and plainclothes
police, as well as security volunteers in red armbands, wherever you
look."
"There is no way you can get anywhere near the place," he said.
Wang
said he and his group of around 14 people had set up a banner at the
old summer palace in a northern suburb of the city, which read:
"Petitioners in Beijing table an NPC motion calling for the legal and
thorough-going resolution of petitioners' demands."
Budget increase
China announced on Monday a rise of 11.5 percent in its domestic security budget, to 701 billion yuan (U.S.$111 billion), with premier Wen Jiabao pledging a full modernization and expansion of the country's main riot-quelling force, the People's Armed Police.
The spending increase comes months ahead of a leadership transition later this year that has kindled fear of instability. The administration of Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao will hand over the reins to a new generation of leaders in the fall.
Liu Kaiming, head of the Shenzhen-based Local Social Observation Research Institute, said the domestic security budget was known in academic circles as the "stability fee."
