2015-01-27
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Herders demand the return of their grazing lands in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, Jan. 26, 2015. (Photo courtesy of SMHRIC)
Chinese authorities on Tuesday detained dozens of people after hundreds gathered outside regional and provincial parliaments across the country, seeking redress for complaints against the government.
More than 40 petitioners converged at around 10 a.m. local time outside the provincial-level people’s congress in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Tuesday, but were stopped some 500 meters from the building and taken away by police, one of the detainees said.
“We didn’t get anywhere near it,” Wang Shurong, a petitioner from Ya’an city in the western part of the province told RFA after being detained in a group of 43 people and taken to an unofficial detention center in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu.
“We were about 500 meters away at an intersection, and there were so many police around the congress buildings, plainclothes and regular police,” Wang said from the “holding center” used to hand would-be petitioners over to officials from their local governments.
“They won’t let us leave. I asked the policeman what laws we had broken, and said that people need to eat, even in jail.”
“We haven’t eaten anything, and they’ve just left us here to get hungry,” Wang added.
She said police were detaining the group until they were taken away by “interceptors,” whose job it is to minimize complaints made to a higher level of government.
“We have to get released to officials from our hometowns,” Wang said.
Wang said petitioners were responding to a notice on the website of the Sichuan provincial people’s congress and its advisory body, the people’s political consultative conference.
“They posted online to say that they welcomed applications from the general public to go and sit in the public gallery [during sessions],” Wang said.
“That’s why we went there, but now they have put us in a holding center,” she said.
Shanghai petitioners
In Shanghai, petitioner Gu Guoping said he saw a group of private security guards beat up a group of petitioners who went to protest against an alleged injustice outside the district people’s congress in the city on Sunday.
“We were outside the Changning district people’s congress, and there was a group of petitioners there trying to complain to delegates about injustices,” Gu told RFA on Tuesday.
