December 2005 Volume 17, No. 11(C) “We Could Disappear At Any Time” Retaliation and Abuses Against Chinese Petitioners I. Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Recommendations ..................................................................................................................10 II. Research Methods..................................................................................................................12 III. The Petitioning System........................................................................................................14 The Petitioning System in Theory and Practice.................................................................15 Lack of Effective Remedies ..................................................................................................18 Why do Petitioners Persist?...................................................................................................20 Recent Reforms.......................................................................................................................22 May 1, 2005 Regulations........................................................................................................23 Case Study: “I’ll stop petitioning when I die” ....................................................................25 IV. Abuses against Petitioners at the Local Level..................................................................27 Police Abuse and Other Official Violence..........................................................................29 Corruption................................................................................................................................31 Forced Eviction and Resettlement.......................................................................................32 Failure of the Courts and Other Dispute Resolution Mechanisms.................................33 Retaliation and Reprisals for Local Complaints.................................................................37 V. Abuses Against Petitioners in Beijing.................................................................................41 A. The “Retrievers”................................................................................................................44 The Impact of the May 1 Regulations.............................................................................48 Case Study: “They did all this to keep me from petitioning” ......................................49 B. Arbitrary Detention of Petitioners Without Trial.........................................................53 Reeducation Through Labor.............................................................................................54 C. The Role of Beijing Police................................................................................................59 Case Study: “I’m going to tell the national leaders what happened to me” ..............62 D. Violations of the Right to Freedom of Assembly ........................................................64 Jailing of Individuals for Applying for Permission to Protest.....................................65 Protests by Petitioners .......................................................................................................67 E. Restrictions on and Harassment of Activists ................................................................71 F. Conditions in the Petitioners’ Village..............................................................................75 Case Study: “We will drag this out until you’re dead” ..................................................78 Appendix: List of imprisoned and detained petitioner activists ..........................................81 Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................83 I. Summary Two people died already in the past year––we don’t dare say how, but they were both petitioners….We can be arrested at any time, and we can disappear at any time. Ai, a petitioner in Beijing China’s petitioning system is a unique cultural and legal tradition with deep historical roots. Although it has taken different forms over the centuries, it dates to the beginnings of the Chinese empire. Early Confucian texts refer to commoners submitting memorials to the emperor about their complaints. In China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644- 1911), petitioners traveled to Beijing and sometimes waited outside the gates of the emperor’s palace on their knees, or tried to intercept imperial processions, to present their appeals.1 Today, their descendants stage sit-ins in front of Zhongnanhai, the Beijing compound where China’s leaders live and work, and try to push their petitions into their limousines. Thousands of others throng Beijing’s streets in front of national petitions offices, holding up signs that describe their cases. Their numbers swell during major political conventions. These petitioners, many of them rural people with minimal education or resources, often come to Beijing fleeing local violence and seeking the venue of last resort. This report is the first in-depth look at what happens to petitioners who attempt to find redress for grievances within China's petitioning system. Research was carried out in China. The stories of abuse we heard––and which we report in the words of petitioners themselves––were chilling, and confirm anecdotal accounts previously published. These abuses call for urgent measures to protect petitioners from systematic violence and ill- treatment. The words most commonly translated as “petition” are xinfang (), literally “letters and visits,” or shangfang (), “visiting higher [authorities].” Under the petitioning system, citizens unsatisfied with the decisions handed down by local officials or local courts may write letters of complaint or appear in person at special petition bureaus throughout the country. If petitioners are unsatisfied with the response to a petition they have the right 1 Jonathan K. Ocko, “I’ll take it all the way to Beijing: Capital appeals in the Qing,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 47.2 (May 1988), p. 294. 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 11(C) to continue up the chain of petition bureaus all the way from the village level to the township, county, provincial, and national levels. It is estimated that a staggering ten million petitions were filed in 2004.2 According to the People’s Daily, “An official survey revealed that 40 percent of these complaints are about police, courts and prosecutors’ offices, 33 percent about government, 13 percent about corruption and 11 percent about injustice.”3 Other specific subjects often named in petitions include environmental problems, workplace complaints, and forced evictions. Most petitions are filed at the local level, but frustration with the lack of action has led to a dramatic increase in the number of appeals to Beijing and in the number of cases filed directly with national instead of local petitions offices. According to official statistics, in the first quarter of 2005, the number of petition cases submitted in writing to the State Council Petitions Bureau in Beijing increased 99.4 percent, and the number of visitors to the bureau increased 94.9 percent, compared to letters and visits during the same period in 2004.4 In 2003, the State Bureau of Letters and Visits received 14 percent more petitions than in 2002.5 In principle, petitioning is encouraged by the government and Party. The right to petition is guaranteed under Chinese law and by the constitution6, reflecting the historical role that petitioning has played in Chinese governance. With few other channels to raise grievances, and without a free press or the right to freedom of association or assembly, the petitioning system acts as a necessary pressure release valve for a government and Party that, in a political system lacking accountability to its own citizens, often finds itself out of touch with ground realities or the views of ordinary people. The petitioning system can therefore be an asset, bringing problem areas, such as 2 Josephine Ma, “Petition reforms a bid to ease social tensions,” South China Morning Post, November 17, 2004. Many petitioners submit complaints to multiple offices at multiple levels of the system, so numbers of individual cases are likely fewer; however, many petitioners also submit complaints on behalf of large groups. 3 People’s Daily, January 6, 2005, at http://english.people.com.cn/200501/06/eng20050106_169769.html. 4 Josephine Ma, “Petitioners losing faith, report warns,” South China Morning Post, November 19, 2004. 5 Yu Jianrong, "Xinfang Zhidu Pipan (Critique of the Petition System)" December 5, 2004 [online], http://www.yannan.cn/data/detail.php?id=4842 (retrieved July 10, 2005). 6 Article 41 of the constitution states, “Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints,