Road to Petition
- Source: The Global Times
- [22:18 April 29 2009]
- Comments
A city of Shenyang public security bureau staff member handles petition issues. Photos: CFP
Guards at the gates
The guards at the bureau gates act like old acquaintances. “How are you doing these days?” one asks Shan as she passes through the security check.
An unpleasant odor permeates the high-ceilinged hall that echoes with shouting, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ghostly voices murmur complaints as diverse as illegal land seizures and unfair counter-revolutionary labels dating back to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
The bureau has processed 10 million petitions in the last five years. Here, supervised by burly security guards, petitioners petition expressionless clerks behind perspex windows.
After picking up her forms and reaching the head of a “short” 200-person line, Shan presents her 45-page complaint form to a bespectacled male clerk. In the next-door booth, a Henan man explains how his house became an accident blackspot after his hometown built a new road (See sidebar A petitioner’s tale of troubles, car crashes).
Attitude seems important: the clerks have short tempers. Most petitioners are denied within minutes and if a petitioner refuses to leave, the clerk calls the guards over.
After a few minutes’ intense questioning, Shan succeeds. She becomes one of the chosen few to be granted a 20-minute audience on the second floor. As Shan ascends, another petitioner is refused. A woman in her 50s explodes into tears and starts wailing “Why did you refuse to let me in?” Security guards arrive within seconds and drag the woman away by her arms, legs trailing weakly behind her prostrate body.
Not everyone is sent home. According to 2007 research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, more than 10,000 petitioners have set up temporary residence in the capital city, doing the rounds of petition offices that among others include the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and even the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.
After her talk in one of the 37 upstairs meeting rooms, Shan is handed a written notice and told to file her complaint at the Office of Letters and Calls of the Beijing Committee of Communist Party of China and Beijing Municipal People’s Government. Shan is beaming. She has lost count of how many visits she has made to the State bureau: it’s the first written response she has received since starting out in March 2006.
Shan’s first petition targeted alleged corruption at the mining company in Jixi. According to Shan, her leaders swindled the central government out of a more-than-30 million yuan compensation fee by falsely reporting 3,000 employees had been laid off. Three leaders then occupied luxury apartments to which they were not entitled, Shan also alleged. Global Times reporters made 12 phone calls to four departments of Jixi Mining Group but none were answered.