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By Dinah Gardner in Beijing
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| Paramilitary and plainclothes police try to keep petitioners out of Beijing [AFP] |
It has taken seven years, cost more than $20 billion to get here, and on the eve of the big event, nothing is going to spoil China's show - especially uninvited guests from the provinces.
Part of the Olympic preparations, not heralded on the official games' website, is a campaign to clear the streets of petitioners. These, mostly destitute middle-aged men and women, are in Beijing as a last port of call to lawfully file complaints against alleged corruption in their home towns and villages.
But as the Olympics approaches, the pressure is on to clear the streets of these "embarrassing" justice-seekers.
Most often, complainants are swept up by police while queuing outside petition offices.
"A couple of days ago the police rounded up a bunch of people and put them on buses and drove them away," one petitioner, a man from central Henan province surnamed Cheng, told Al Jazeera.
"A few weeks ago there were several thousand of us, now there are only a few hundred left."
Official pressure
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| Plainclothes officials keep watch on the petition offices [Photo: D. Gardner] |
Local officials are routinely punished if too many petitioners from their region end up in Beijing. But during especially sensitive times, such as Communist Party congresses and the Olympics, they face even more pressure to keep petitioners away from the capital.
"The central government has set mandatory targets [in petitioner numbers] and the provincial and municipal governments have to follow them," says a Chinese online activist who has adopted the moniker Tiger Temple.
"The nearer the Olympics draws, the more intense the situation becomes."
Certainly the main road outside the State Bureau for Letters and Visits, one of the main petition offices in Fengtai, was dotted with at least 100 plainclothes officials from provincial bureaus.
Their job: to persuade or force petitioners to give up and go home. The mostly middle-aged men with crew cuts sat in groups keeping a watchful eye on the entrance to the petition office - many wore Beijing 2008 t-shirts.
We were denied entry into the bureau – "have you come to petition?" joked one security guard – while the plainclothes officials refused to speak.
Last September, authorities demolished the so-called petitioner's village, a nest of one-story slums a short walk from many of the main petition offices in Beijing's southwestern district of Fengtai. The complainants used to rent cheap rooms here while waiting for their cases to be processed.
Street life
Now many of the petitioners that are left are forced to sleep on the streets.
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"I don’t give a damn about the Olympics … What’s it got to do with me?"
Cheng, petitioner
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Cheng said about 60 or 70 other petitioners, including himself, bunk down alongside a canal under Fengtai's Taoran Bridge. Unlike the waterways surrounding the showcase Olympic Village, which have been pumped clean for the sports spectacle, the water here is rank with polluted froth.
"The police are always trying to catch us that's why we're hiding down here," says Cheng.
The petitioners sleep in shifts, he says. While one group rests, another will keep watch. If the police come, the alarm is sounded, and everyone scuttles into hiding.
Because of the Olympics, security has been bolstered all across the city. But even set against this, the police presence in Fengtai's scruffy streets is overwhelming. About one in five cars is a security van.
The pomp and circumstance of the multi-billion dollar Olympic games could not be further from the reality of life for these petitioners.
"I couldn't give a damn about the Olympics," says Cheng. "What's it got to do with me?"
The games do however bring with them one advantage – the massive influx of foreign media, many eager to test China's pledge to allow complete freedom of reporting.
"After August 1 there will be many foreign journalists coming to Beijing," says one woman petitioner. "I cherish the hope that one of them will publish my story and help me."
Seeking justice
As we talk with Cheng and the woman on the canal bank, a crowd begins to gather. We are nervous plainclothes cops are coming to break up the interview, but it is soon obvious from their dishevelled appearance that they are petitioners.
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| The aim is to clear Beijing of petitioners during the games [GALLO/GETTY] |
Their skin and clothes stained from sleeping rough; their lives stuffed into plastic carrier bags and ripped canvas hold-alls. They begin thrusting piles of stapled photocopied documents at us – their petition cases – in the hope that we can help them.
Cheng says he came to Beijing in June to petition his case. In 2006 his son and daughter-in-law were murdered by two robbers. One of the attackers was jailed, but the other, says Cheng, bribed the police and is now free.
His son was 29, his wife, 25. They left a six-year-old daughter.
Other petitioners are also here to complain about police corruption. Some are angry about forced evictions, illegal land grabs; one woman says she is trying to get her three-year-old daughter a hukou (identity papers).
Her local authority in eastern Shandong province refused to issue one because they accused her – wrongly she says - of breaking the one-child policy.
"Pity my poor little girl. Look at her," she says, starting to weep. "She has no father, no hukou. No one cares about us."
The toddler, who is wearing a gauzy pink dress smudged with dirt and plastic sandals a few sizes too big, sucks on a metal spoon.
The chance, even during non-sensitive times, that the petitioners will find justice, is slight. Corruption is rife say rights groups while local authorities often bribe Beijing officials to drop cases.
The most petitioners can expect is a letter from the Beijing office requesting local governments to look into the case. Such orders, say groups, are routinely ignored back home.
Persistence
Yet petitioners will stay here for years in an attempt to seek justice.
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"The system is a joke"
Ye, petitioner
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A burly man in a tattered t-shirt, surnamed Ye, said he had been petitioning since 1996. He accuses his local police in Henan province of being in collusion with a bunch of thugs who robbed his house during his father's funeral.
"The system is like a joke," he says.
Whatever the merits of their individual cases, the tragedy of this situation is the lack of dignity government and society give the petitioners.
Although under Chinese law they are within their rights to petition in Beijing, many are treated like criminals for doing so, says Tiger Temple.
There is no support network or charitable organisation for them except for a few lucky ones who can get legal aid, he says.
Chinese people in general are not sympathetic towards them. "Even though they recognise there is widespread injustice, many people believe petitioning is not acceptable," he adds. "They think petitioners are troublemakers. On one hand, they are tortured by injustice; on the other hand, they are looked down upon by society.”
Even so, many complainants feel like they have nothing to lose by staying here.
Cheng says he does not hold much hope.
"China is just too corrupt," he says sadly. "But I've given my life up for this so I will stay."
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Feedback |
Number of comments : 1 |
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Angelo Sartor
Canada |
05/08/2008 |
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No room for Complaint |
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It is simply astounding how we are seduced by the prospect of the olympic games going so well in china, when so many of thier citizens are being subjected to harassment, intimidation and just plain brutality. Shame on the chinese government for treating their citizens in such a way, and shame on the rest of the world for climbing on the beijing band wagon! |
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