HONG KONG—Authorities in the Chinese capital have detained around 1,000 people with grievances against the government ahead of the country’s annual parliament which opens in Beijing Wednesday, petitioners told RFA’s Mandarin service.
“I’d say there were more than 1,000 petitioners from across the country in Majialou,” Huang Caipiao, a petitioner from the southeastern province of Fujian, said after being sent to the unofficial detention center for petitioners south of the city.
“There was no one listening to our grievances there,” said Huang, who was intercepted by Beijing police Monday as he headed towards the national prosecution service, the Supreme Procuratorate.
Huang, who was being held in a Beijing hotel by police from his hometown when he spoke to reporter Han Qing, said he was waiting to be sent back to his hometown of Lianjiang.
Huang, a shrimp farmer seeking compensation for business losses following his forced eviction, has made 15 petitioning trips to the capital, yielding nothing but a year in jail.
“Now I have lost all hope,” said Huang, whose story is becoming increasingly familiar across China as local officials and big business cash in on soaring land values, pushing rural families from the land with little or no compensation.
Detained in 'study group'
China’s law proclaims human rights, freedom and equality before the law. But why have the perpetrators not been brought to justice?
Lin Xiuli, a petitioner from the eastern city of Qingdao, was caught by officials from her hometown Monday in Beijing as she tried to petition the Supreme Court, on the other side of Tiananmen Square from the parliament buildings.
She was immediately sent back to Qingdao and is now being detained at a “study class for petitioners.”
“My misfortunes began in 2003,” Lin said. “I was pushed from the sixth floor of a building. But the perpetrators were acquitted by the courts.”
“China’s law proclaims human rights, freedom, and equality before the law. But why have the perpetrators not been brought to justice? Why has there been no trial for them? Why am I still detained?”
Online civil rights campaigner Huang Qi, who runs the 64Tianwang.com Web site, said authorities had stepped up efforts to sweep petitioners off the streets of the capital ahead of the National People’s Congress (NPC), which begins March 5.
“There has been a drastic increase in the numbers of petitioners going to Beijing this year,” Huang Qi said. “Likewise, there has been an increased response to intercept them by the authorities.”
Letter to leaders
Around 1,200 petitioners wrote an open letter to the NPC, which debates policy but has no history of challenging the ruling Communist Party, calling for greater recognition of the rights violations they say they suffered at the hands of officials.
Several hundred petitioners were broken up by police by the Gongyi East overpass as they tried to hold a roadside meeting with foreign journalists. Some were detained and taken to the unofficial detention center at Majialou to await forcible removal to their hometowns.
“There is nowhere for us to tell our tales of injustice,” one of them comments on a video of the meeting. Another: “There are millions of officials on our back; we are truly wronged.” Then suddenly, “Quick, get out of here. It’s not safe anymore!”
Meanwhile, petitioners who tried to deliver calcium-enriched baby milk formula to Zeng Jinyan, the wife of detained AIDS and civil rights activist Hu Jia, were turned away at the door by national security police.
Zeng, who has been under house arrest at the couple’s Beijing apartment together with her three-month old daughter, is unable to communicate with the outside world by telephone or Internet.
Meanwhile, police in the northern province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, arrested Zheng Mingfang, another rights activist who has called frequently for Hu Jia’s release. Zheng’s husband told RFA Monday from their home in Ji county that police didn’t show arrest warrants when they took his wife away.
“I don’t expect to see her before the Olympic Games,” he said.
The first session of the 11th NPC will open March 5, with deputies from all of China’s provinces, autonomous regions, and munipalities, Hong Kong, Macau, and the People’s Liberation Army.
By Tuesday, 1.5 million Internet users had posted messages for China’s leaders on the Web site of the official Xinhua News Agency, the agency said.
Around 300,000 questions and offers of advice were listed, including complaints about pensions for the elderly and comments about the government’s handling of the severe snows that battered much of the country during the Lunar New Year holiday period last month.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao, Han Qing, and Yan Xiu. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie and Chen Ping. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.