2014-08-05
Members of the New Citizens Movement hold banners in public, urging officials to disclose their assets as a check against corruption, in Beijing in a file photo.
EYEPRESS NEWS
Authorities in the northern Chinese province of Hebei have thrown a security cordon of armed police around an anti-corruption inspection team from Beijing after it was swamped by ordinary people with complaints against alleged government wrong-doing.
The team was one of 13 sent by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) to probe official business across the country.
Inspectors are charged with looking for “possible misconduct,” including corruption, failure to implement the Party’s frugality directives and other policies as well as malpractice in official selection and promotion procedures, the CCDI said in a statement at the beginning of the month.
But the team was kept separate from hundreds of people who converged on government buildings with complaints in recent days, as the authorities drafted in large numbers of police, plainclothes state security police and private security guards, eyewitnesses said.
“There are uniformed police standing guard on both sides of the streets, as well as some plainclothes officers driving around in cars,” Hebei petitioner Bao Runpu told RFA on Tuesday.
“There are a lot [of people with complaints],” he added. “No sooner does one group leave than another arrives.”
But he said none of the petitioners was being allowed to meet with the investigation team directly.
“They can’t meet with them,” Bao said. “They have set up a hotline but it doesn’t matter how often you call it; you can’t get through. It’s permanently busy.”
He said he had been followed to provincial government headquarters by a detail of police from his hometown.
“The first day, they detained me and wouldn’t let me go,” Bao said.
Repeated calls to the anti-graft hotline resulted in a busy signal during office hours on Tuesday.
‘Totally surrounded’
A second petitioner, Zhang Cuilei, said the inspection team had been “totally surrounded” by police since arriving in the province.
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