The Cangzhou, Hebei peasant Chen Tongmei repeatedly traveled to the capital to seek an audience with higher-ups [to report grievances against the local Hebei government]. After returning, the Cangzhou government made arrangements to compensate Chen (they agreed on 100,000 RMB), sort of like keep-your-mouth-shut money, the meaning was ‘don’t go report to Beijing again’.

At this point the story diverges: One country cadre says that Chen suspected 100,000 was too little, and demanded 200,000. Three village cadres say Chen Tongmei didn’t want compensation, only justice. Afterwards, Chen was arrested on suspicion of trying to extort money from the government, and sentenced to five years in prison.

At the same time [Chen was being sentenced] in Cangzhou there were all kinds of cases of rural citizens extorting the government or the courts. These peasants were all sentenced, just like Chen Tongmei.

What’s interesting is that after the Chen Tongmei case the government had tasted something sweet [and didn't want to let it go]. They started directly consulting with peasants who wanted to report things to Beijing, saying 300,000 RMB to not report [their grievances].

The peasants responded, and wrote guarantees [they wouldn't report to the Beijing if they received the money]. Then, out of the blue, PSB officers would appear and take the peasants away, saying they [were trying to] extort the government.

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The following interview with a county police chief is another example that reveals critical details about government surveillance efforts. In particular, according to this Xinhua article, in a county of 400,000, there are 12,093 informants on the government payroll who are charged with gathering intelligence.

This Xinhua article is entitled: Interview with Comrade Liu Xingchen, Assistant to the County Head of
Kailu County, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Party Committee Secretary of the Public Security Bureau, Director of the Public Security Bureau. Published on August 28, 2009, excerpts translated by CDT:

Interviewee: Comrade Liu Xingchen (刘兴臣), Assistant to the County Head of Kailu County, Party Committee Secretary of the Public Security Bureau, Bureau Chief of the Public Security Bureau.
Interviewer: Tang Jianquan (唐建权)

Xinhua reporter: Director Liu, Hello! Kailu County is a large county with a population of 400,000. Police activities in the countryside are especially important. The Public Security Bureau’s (PSB’s) police activities in the countryside are leading the way in our region [Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region], and [the PSB] has created a new model of carrying out police activities in the countryside; this model is being spread throughout the entire city and even throughout the entire region [Inner Mongolia]. So, please tell us, what are the characteristics and results of Kailu county’s new model of police activities; in what ways is this new model new?

Director Liu：In order to enhance capacity at the local level, and energize the ground level, our bureau has emphasized both to build larger and more powerful as well as more advanced and higher quality local police stations. Our bureau has reported to the County government and received a lot of support from the county Party Committee and government. We established a “financed by the government, managed by the Public Security Bureau” model, in which every village in the county has one police station, hires one assistant police staff, funded by the county government with an annual budget 1.4 million RMB. And this budget number is within the annual financial budget of the county government. So we have realized every village having a police station, and every village having an assistant police staff. Until now, we have established 283 police stations at the village level, and hired 289 assistant police staff.

… The policing model of our Bureau is innovative because of the extensiveness of its range. Every village has a police station, all together 277, and there are another six police stations in the capital town of Kailu County. So we have a very sensitive intelligence network. The 289 village assistant police staff members are all from local villages, so they have the strength of familiarity with the people, locations, and the local situation. They can timely and accurately discover all sorts of information that might destabilize the society, and can effectively maintain stability at the village level. This is also an effective solution to the problem of police manpower, and strengthening the capacity of Public Security agencies in handling the current complex situation.

(...)
Read the rest of Liu Xingchen (刘兴臣), County Police Chief: The “Three Ones” Model of Intelligence Gathering (846 words)

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Shi arrived in Beijing months ago hoping officials would resolve her complaint that local police had illegally arrested her nephew. Instead she has found nothing but trouble.

Shi has been imprisoned twice, taken first by security forces to an isolated stockroom and held for days with 100 other people. She was eventually released with her ailing husband, and then was abducted last summer and held for several weeks at a shabby private home.

Jailers denied her requests for water and a piece of paper to swat away the maddening mosquitoes, Shi said.

Today she continues a petitioning process that dates to China’s feudal times.

Read more about black jails, via CDT.

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Pulling her scarf a little higher to cover her mouth, she braved the bitter wind chill on one of Beijing’s coldest days to march to the Supreme People’s Court.

Like hundreds of Chinese who haunt government offices in the capital every day, American Julie Harm is seeking attention and help from national authorities in redressing her grievances against local officials. She could have blended in with the crowds outside all the nondescript buildings she’s visited in the past year – if not for her tall frame and strawberry-blond hair.

Harms, 31, has unwittingly become the first and only foreign – and thus the most famous – petitioner in China, with her story and photos splashing across newspapers, magazines and Web sites. For the Houston native, her unlikely celebrity status grew out of a simple yet daunting mission: clearing the name of her Chinese fiancé, imprisoned on what she says is a false charge.

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It all began, as so many stories do, with a knock on the door. On the morning of August 4, 1998, Ma Yalian found three officials from a local real estate firm outside her Shanghai home. Demolition papers in hand, they uttered the words Chinese home-owners dread to hear: her three-story family home in downtown Shanghai was to be torn down to make way for an urban redevelopment project. Then came the second blow. She would be relocated to a cramped, dingy apartment in Shanghai’s outskirts, and given little compensation. “Fight the order at your own risk,” the men warned.

In many ways, Ma Yalian’s story is hardly unusual. Every year, tens of thousands of Chinese lose their homes to influential real estate companies. Evicted residents are routinely forced out of their houses with little or no compensation, and often have little recourse to justice. Every year, there are an estimated 90,000 “mass incidents” — officialspeak for protests — reported across China. The majority of them involve land rights issues. Most residents have to quietly accept their fate, intimidated by the influential real estate mafia and befuddled by opaque laws.

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Residents in Liaoning Province who want to file a complaint or request on public security issues may do so remotely at their neighborhood police stations through a televised conference system.

The system, launched Thursday, allows residents to raise their issues by speaking into a camera instead of having to travel to Shenyang, the capital.

The local police accepted 17 cases Thursday, the China News Service said.

“The video reception will minimize the petitioners’ cost and maximize the efficiency of reception work, which won’t be restricted by numbers of petitioners, time, venue, weather or other factors,” said Meng Wei, director of the Letters and Visits Office, Public Security Department of Liaoning Province.

Meng said video reception will maximize the use of police resources, as there are more than 42 million people and 71,000 police officers in Liaoning Province.

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Despite more than a quarter century of legal reforms and institution building, China still has holdovers from centuries of its own unique legal tradition. One of these is the practice of petitioning higher authorities to overturn local government decisions.

But China’s opening to the outside world — and the influx of foreigners that has followed — seem to have produced an odd first: a petitioning foreigner.

Julie Harms is an American woman who lives in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. For the past year, she has gone on a Chinese-style quest for justice on behalf of her Chinese fiance.

Harms, a tall, blond, 30-year-old Texan and Harvard graduate, stands out among the petitioners in line at the Police Ministry complaints office, tucked away in a downtown alleyway in Beijing.

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Zheng was being watched by a guard inside the locked room, who protested loudly at first to the interview but then walked away. Other guards earlier Saturday stopped Zheng’s wife from getting inside to see him.

Zheng said he and others were taken to Majialou, which Chinese Human Rights Defenders described as “a central ‘black jail’ for petitioners,” for processing before being taken to his current location, a dingy guesthouse with “Siyuan Hotel” spelled out in neon lights.

Zheng said he and three other people were being held there. A small tear in the plastic covering the door’s screen showed a flourescent-lit room with a water cooler.

At first, the guard behind the locked door said Zheng was not there, but Zheng then came to the door.

He said the guards hit his wife and pulled her hair when she tried to get inside to speak with him. Zheng’s wife, Cao Xiangzhen, said the same earlier Saturday.

Read more about “black jails” from CDT.

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Despite what the crowd might expect of a foreigner, she has made little progress. Her boyfriend faces his second trial on trespassing charges on Wednesday.

“They see this white face and think I have some magic powers, when I can’t even resolve my boyfriend’s case successfully,” said Harms. She made a sour face. “I haven’t really heard of the whole happy ending.”

Chinese have brought grievances about corruption and injustice to Beijing for centuries, first to the emperor and now to the ruling communist party. Some stay in the capital for months or years, camping out under highways. Some are grabbed off the streets and sent home, often being held in unofficial detention centers petitioners call “black jails.”

Harms is believed to be one of the few, and perhaps the first, foreign petitioner. Largely spared the rough treatment Chinese petitioners often receive, the results are no different. She finds official suspicion, indifference and the desire that complainers would simply go away.

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At 9 AM on the morning of November 11th, 2009, I was at a hospital with two female patients who also contracted HIV from blood transfusions presenting a petition asking for justice. At 11, I was called away by someone from the local health department, and a government official came and took me away. The two women (Zhao and Cao) were taken away by the police. I was taken to a Beijing guesthouse.

On the 22nd, I was taken back to my home from Beijing by someone from the local government, ostensibly for the purposes of negotiating a settlement.

From the 23rd to the 26th, I met with people from the bureau of health, the county head for the health bureau, an associate dean from the hospital where I was infected, but we still weren’t able to reach an agreement about treatment and compensation.

On the 26th, on a pedicab on my way to the station to return to Beijing, I was suddenly joined by two strangers, who took me to a red Changhe car with the license plate “豫QDA518″ [豫 indicates it is a Henan plate], saying we’d first go to the Madian City Train Station and then go to Beijing together.

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Liaowang, or Outlook, a dependably stodgy publication aimed at Communist Party bureaucrats and policy makers, ran an exposé on Tuesday laying out the Byzantine network of interceptors, guards and holding pens used to put off the petitioners who flock to Beijing in the hope that the authorities will resolve longstanding grievances, many of them involving official corruption in their hometowns.

According to the report, which was also published online by the official Xinhua news agency, those grabbed off the street often have their cellphones and identification confiscated before being locked away in guesthouses or dank basements. After being held for days or weeks, inadequately fed and sometimes beaten, they are shipped back to their home provinces with the admonition that they stay away from the capital.

At peak times, the article said, as many as 10,000 retrievers — those paid by local officials to keep petitioners from successfully filing their complaints — roam Beijing in search of quarry. The report counted 73 secret detention centers, many of them run by regional governments, and laid out in detail the lucrative business of retrieving, detaining and sending home petitioners. The magazine described it as a “chain of gray industry.”

Such a system of extralegal detention, sometimes called black jails, “damages the legitimate rights of petitioners and seriously damages the government’s image,” the article said.

Read more about black jails via CDT. The original Liaowang article is here.

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The report was based on interviews with 38 former detainees who had gone to Beijing to complain after suffering what they described as corruption or other abuses of power at lower levels of government. It said that guards at the so-called black jails beat, sexually abused, intimidated and robbed men, women and teenagers.

Provincial and municipal officials in China are subject to a national civil service evaluation system in which they are penalized based on the number of complaints received in Beijing about their management. So local and provincial officials have a strong incentive to prevent petitioners from reaching the central government.

Sophie Richardson, the advocacy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch, said that abuses were widespread in China’s prison system, which operates under some judicial supervision, but that they were worse in unofficial jails.

“We’re talking about a country with torture in formal detention centers, and the black jails are 10 floors down” in terms of the treatment of detainees, she said.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine reports that China plans reforms in its prison system:

China will begin to separate suspects arrested for minor offenses from violent criminals as part of a series of proposed reforms to its detention system announced this week. The system has been under fire for months, following a series of at least 15 suspicious deaths in China’s extensive system of prisons and jails this year.

Lawyers and human-rights advocates welcomed the proposed changes, announced Nov. 9, which also state that detainees must be informed of their rights, can’t be forced to do labor and can’t be forced to pay for their detention costs. If the proposals are instituted, police or judicial officials would have to inform suspects’ families within 12 hours of their detention.

Read more about black jails, via CDT.

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The word corruption evokes imagery of smoky banquets where some officials, potbellied and red from baijiu, discuss business with entrepreneurs no less round. Young, light-hearted girls complete the scene that finishes with the presentation of an envelope just as inflated and red as its recipient. That is, unless the scene winds down by a karaoke machine, in a sauna (practical, since nudity assures that no recorder will tape the exchanges), or in the back of a limousine with tinted glass. Picturesque images of a certainly reprehensible practice, but one which we end up finding almost acceptable. Exotic, maybe. And besides … isn’t corruption in the country’s culture, just as it is in many others? We’ll just have to do with.

The anti-corruption campaign led in Chongqing by Bo Xilai lifted the veil over the ways and customs of a municipality (the most heavily populated in China with 30 million inhabitants) where politicians, police, judges, and gangsters work hand in hand. The court trial in process has attracted a crowd of petitioners, victims of these mafia-connected associations. They have a vague hope to get justice, but most of all, they are no longer afraid; they want their stories to be known, and take satisfaction in seeing the contrite face[s] of those who, just a few months before, terrorized the city. Far from the picturesque scenes described above, the corruption here is synonymous with terrible violence.

Hong Guibi: When her husband refused to give up his field (about 100 square meters) to the local Communist Party secretary, some thugs armed with machetes entered her home. They cut the recalcitrant to pieces, and then went for his wife, whom they left for dead. She survived. The police did not intervene and refused to make an investigation. Hong Guibi is in front of the courts everyday, and shows photos of her husband’s body and her own body covered in long scars to anyone who wishes to see.

The parents of Zhou Changyong, whose body was found stabbed twenty times in his taxi. Police refused to investigate.

Jiao Jiawei explains on this banner that his daughter was killed by doctors in order to cover up a medical mistake committed during a surgical operation.

More images by Sabrie can be seen in a New York Times slideshow accompanying the article “Chinese Trial Reveals Vast Web of Corruption” by Andrew Jacobs.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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It was scorching hot in August 2009. Residents who had been forcibly relocated to temporary, crudely constructed shelter found the heat unbearable.

Talks with the local government over terms for relocation compensation were unsuccessful, and to this day, over 30 households have still not signed an agreement. In the end, however, they were evicted. In addition, since their residential conditions are fairly poor, there is no way to protect their basic living conditions.

Wu Zongming’s family is among those households. A little over a year ago, this former Guiping Letters and Visits director took to petitioning to safeguard his rights. “At times, I would think to myself that this was quite comical, that the head of Letters and Visits would petition.” Wu Zongming laughed at himself, “But aside from [petitioning], I really had no better recourse.”

During my interviews, [I found that] most people directed their anger toward the director of the company headquarters responsible for the demolition and eviction, Guiping city’s deputy director, and city director of Legislative affairs, Wang Jiawei.

Local residents gave me a signed and fingerprinted document: on the morning of 4/15/07, at the Guiping Second Line Ship Lock Project First Meeting, Wang Jiawei said: “As regards the the project’s land confiscation and relocation problem, you must sign [the document] at the headquarter’s determined time. Looking for a lawyer or a reporter is useless; we can overrule them. Any more ideas for compensation are just dreams.” “We’d rather give this money to the courts than to you. This project is under government contract; of course there should be some profit.”

On the afternoon of July 10, 2009, I went to the relocation and resettlement office headquarters during the relocation process to understand more about the situation and to ask Wang Jiawei for confirmation. Using “work is too busy; no time” as a reason, he declined my interview.

In July 2008, a leader at Guangxi Autonomous Region Communications Department stopped by Guiping to investigate the progress of Second Line Ship Lock’s project. Huang Yonghui [another evictee] thought it could be an opportunity to speak out about the situation, and so decided to wait at the Second Line Ship Lock’s roadside for the leader.

At that time, someone gave Huang Yonghui a call to let him know that there would be someone to meet him at the municipal construction office. “After we arrived, we found that there was [no one waiting]. We never imagined they would lure us like that.” Huang continued, “The construction office receptionist said that the leader was too busy, but that we could have the number to the communications office leader to speak about our situation.” However, they later discovered that the number was fake; the call would not go through.

After this, Wu Zongming and Huang Yonghui personally went to the regional communications office to petition and to look into the issue. This was their official start down the road of petitioning.

Yu Jianrong, Director of the Institute of Rural Development at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes in the Oriental Morning Post about the case. Excerpted and translated by CDT:

Is his petitioning really that “comical”? From a reasonable standpoint, Wu Zongming — aside from formerly holding the title of Director of Letters and Visits, he is still a normal citizen of the People’s Republic of China. His petitioning is just like a citizen within the system exercising the right to appeal, to accuse, to inform, and to exercise other constitutional rights. Essentially, this isn’t worth special attention.

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Wang Keqin recently posted many photos from his trip to a rural Henan town. He was there investigating the AIDS situation, but found these slogans posted all over the town and thought they were interesting. He posted them, in his words, “so that people can understand the relationship between China and seeking audience with higher-ups [上访]“. For those who haven’t seen it before, the term “seeking audience with higher-ups” refers to traveling to Beijing or larger cities to report local government misdeeds to higher authorities.

“Attack illegal reporting to higher-ups, defend social stability”

“Those with complaints shouldn’t entrap and attack administrative units of the gov’t and Party”

More photos are on Wang’s blog.

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I said, if the media wants to pay attention and speculate about things, I cannot control that, it’s their business. Writing a blog post with my commentary is exercising freedom of speech. I wrote two posts about this case, that wouldn’t just turn into rampant speculation, would it? If a reporter reads it, thinks it’s newsworthy and heads out to collect more information, that isn’t my fault! The real “master criminal” is not me, but the people who create cases like this!

If they could deal with the case according to the law, and remove the plaintiff from judging the case according to the law, I would have no way of calling anything into question. Of course, their meaning was that if I didn’t write a blog post, a reporter wouldn’t be able to see it, and thus won’t go off to interview and report. Only looking at it from this angle am I a “Master Criminal”.

Their searching me out to speak with me came from good intentions. They advised me: next time, be a little more discreet, don’t write this kind of blog post. I said, when I see or encounter injustice and inequality, if I don’t even dare to speak about it, ignore it, adopt a superior attitude as though I were above it, those who enforce the law unjustly will achieve even more of their dreams. If they’re afraid the people will criticize and call things into question, then they should just not do anything illegal!

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Firstly, having the local officials to process and resolve those complaints is a wrong strategy. To local officials, people’s petition visit to Beijing implies that they have made mistake and will make them lose faces. Will those responsible for the grievances be so righteous to correct their mistakes? Such [an] assumption is merely wishful thinking.

Secondly, it is an issue of which government body should be responsible for monitoring the resolution of complaints.

Thirdly, there is no system to hold those officials responsible for people’s grievances into account, which means that they can do whatever they want without being punished. When things get out of control, petitioning to the top becomes inevitable. Since ancient times, ordinary Chinese hold the view that “the emperor is always virtuous, while officials below are often corrupted.” Complaining to the emperor becomes the only choice.

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Legal officials from Beijing will now visit people with complaints in the provinces in order to hear their cases.

Petitions can also be filed online and a response or solution is to be given within 60 days.

Officials have previously tried to stop the thousands who go to the capital with complaints about land grabs, police beatings and legal abuses.

It is the first time the highest level of the ruling Communist Party has taken such measures in order to deal with the issue.

Read more about recent investigations into the treatment of petitioners once they arrive in Beijing, here, here, and here. All of CDT’s coverage about petitioners can be found here.

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Last week’s edition of Southern Weekly (Aug. 6) carried an extraordinarily rare article on a subject that is usually off-limits for the mainstream media in China: the “black jails” that operate outside of the law in Beijing, detaining people who have committed no crime and have simply come to the capital to exercise their legal right to petition the central government. The report avoids the term “black jail” and does not discuss the widespread use of these illegal places of detention. Nevertheless, it gives a graphic account of life inside one of them.

The spark for this article was the rape of a girl from Anhui province in the middle of the night, six hours after she arrived, by one of the thugs employed by a Henan local official to guard the petitioners in storeroom in the Juyuan Hotel near Beijing South Station.

Not surprisingly, given the importance of this story, it was quickly deleted from Southern Weekly’s website and other news sites that had copied it. Since then, it has spread through the internet, either in full or in part, in an ongoing process of deletion and reposting. Google.cn and Baidu have been heavily filtering their results for searches on the subject.

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