Citizens finding it harder to find
justice, despite human rights guarantee

Thursday, April 15, 2004

ROBERT J. SAIGET of Agence France-Presse in Beijing

Wang Huanmei, 62, holds up coloor pictures of her dead son lying in a coffin
dressed in a Western suit, sleeves rolled up showing long, purple bruises on
both forearms, and one eye blackened.

She knows the story well. She's ben telling it since 1995 when she found out
that her son Sun Jie - a college graduate - was murdered in a police station
in the eastern Shandong provincial capital of Jinan.

"Sun Jie was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and hung from a tree
and beaten to death on September 8, 1995 in the courtyard of Dajin police
station of Jinan's Huaiyin district," Mrs Wang said.

"He was beaten to death by three people, including the police chief of the
Dajin station Xu Fang."

Her problem is that after years of fruitless efforts to get Jinan and
Shandong officials to investigate her son's death, she is now being
threatened with arrest for bringing the case to the complaints bureau of the
State Council, China's cabinet, in Beijing.

Mrs Wang is not alone.

Dozens of petitioners who gather around the Yongdingmen Train Station in
southern Beijing, near the State Council's complaints bureau, are being
rounded up by police, beaten and sent back to their hometowns, they said.

The police action has come since Wu Bangguo, chairman of the National
People's Congress (NPC), last month ordered local governments to stop
petitioners coming to the capital and mandated local complaints bureaus to
handle the issues locally.

The new order has left petitioners questioning the sincerity of China's new
government, which was sworn in last year with a pledge to be open and
honest, to give priority to the demands of the people and to rule the
country by law.

It was also bad news for people like Mrs Wang, who say government
protectionism and corruption at the local level - especially among the
police - are the reasons why they can't get justice in the first place.

"We cannot get justice in Shandong, so we've been coming here to Beijing for
several years now," said Mrs Wang's husband, Sun Shoulu, 62.

"In Jinan, they have beaten us and threatened us to stop our pandering, now
we come to Beijing and they are doing the same. They call this rule by law."

Mr Sun laughed off as "a sham" and "worthless decoration" a new amendment to
China's constitution that calls for the protection of human rights, passed
by the NPC last month.

"After all these years coming to Beijing, they haven't replied to one of our
petitions," he said.

The central government mandate has also jeopardised hundreds of years of
Chinese tradition that have allowed local peasants to come to the capital to
petition the Emperor's court over injustices in the hinterlands.

With a weak civil society, no democratic elections and a press that is
controlled by the state, China's system of complaint departments has long
been seen as one of the few official channels to openly air grievances.

"I've been threatened, beaten and jailed by the police for trying to
petition," said Du Mingrong, a woman from Baishan city, northeastern Jilin
province.

Ms Du originally came to Beijing to petition a refusal by Baishan police to
investigate the murder of her mother, but is now complaining about a
policeman beating her up at the complaints bureau of the Supreme People's
Court, China's highest court, last year.

Like most other petitioners, she has reams of documents, including typed and
handwritten petitions to different government organs at all levels.

"A policeman named Tian beat me with an electric baton inside the Supreme
People's Court compound last year. The Yongdingmen police are now cracking
down on petitioners that come to Beijing and in Baishan they threatened to
throw me in an insanity asylum if I cause any more trouble," Ms Du said.

Before the March meeting of the NPC, a park-like area near the Yongdingmen
train station had become known as "complaints village" for the amount of
people camped out in cardboard huts or in the open air waiting to table
complaints to the government.

But the area was largely "cleaned up" in March with thousands of petitioners
being hauled off to a gymnasium in western Beijing where they were processed
and forcefully sent back to their hometowns.

During the NPC, thousands of petitioners daily gathered in the area in front
of the State Council complaint's bureau to table petitions, but this week no
more than 15 people were seen milling about at any given time.

Now only a few people gather at the former "complaints village," with many
of their grievances involving unsolved killings of loved ones.

"I've been sleeping on the street under an underpass because to sleep here
[in the village] the police will catch you and send you back," said Qian
Lili, 40, from Shandong's Zibo city.

Mrs Qian's eight-year-old son was murdered by her ex-husband's new wife in
1999, but the crime was not punished due to a plea of insanity which Mrs
Qian says is bogus.

"You have to stay in Beijing to complain because there are so many
ministries and departments. You can complain at the State Council, Supreme
People's Court, All China's Women's Federation, National People's Congress
and the Supreme People's Procuratorate," she said.

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