{"id":49462,"date":"2015-09-21T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=49462 "},"modified":"2015-09-21T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T22:16:00","slug":"49462-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=49462","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Police Detain More Than 1,000 PLA Veterans in Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2015-09-21<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/38\/2015921image(94).jpg\" alt=\"2015921image(94).jpg (600&#215;400)\" \/><\/div><div>People&#8217;s Liberation Army veterans sit outside the provincial government office in south central China&#8217;s Hubei province, May 4, 2015.<\/div><div>(Photo courtesy of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch)<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Authorities in the Chinese capital on Monday detained more than 1,000 veterans of the People&#8217;s Liberation Army (PLA) who gathered outside government buildings in protest over lack of income, protesters said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;There were 20 buses that took us to the Tongzhou district of Beijing, to the side of a road in the countryside,&#8221; PLA veteran and long-time petitioner Yang Suiquan told RFA from one of the buses.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;The buses have all stopped here, and we are still sitting on the bus.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Yang said the buses, each of which had a police escort aboard, appeared to have stopped outside a former army barracks.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;It&#8217;s the police who are bringing us out here,&#8221; Yang said. &#8220;There were 20 buses with several dozen people on each one, so there are more than 1,000 people here, at the very least.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Yang said the veterans had arrived in Beijing on June 23, in the hope of lodging a formal complaint, and had been promised a reply within a 60-day time limit.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;But there has been no reply to date, and nobody was doing anything about it, so we went back there again,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>China&#8217;s tightly controlled state media ran a few positive features on PLA veterans to coincide with the massive PLA military parade on Sept. 3 marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II, Yang said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>But the reports had neglected to mention that many veterans of China&#8217;s brief 1979 border war with Vietnam and the Korean War (1950-1953), live in extreme hardship in old age, he said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;We gave our best, but when we got back, they didn&#8217;t do anything to help us earn a living, find work, get medical care or social security payments,&#8221; Yang said. &#8220;The local governments say they can&#8217;t do anything, but maybe they just don&#8217;t want to.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;We have been forced into petitioning, into pressing our demands,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Sichuan-based rights activist Huang Qi, founder of the Tianwang rights website, said the authorities are increasingly cracking down on PLA veterans, regarded as a highly politically-sensitive section of the population, who routinely complain about their treatment by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;There are a lot of veterans who have fought in wars that have been put in jail by the authorities,&#8221; Huang said. &#8220;The government&#8217;s way of dealing with this issue is pretty defective.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;I think the authorities should find a way to ensure their standard of living &#8230; or else it&#8217;s going to have a big impact on applications to join the Chinese armed forces in the present,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Pesticide protests<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The mass detentions came just days after a petitioner from Shanghai died after ingesting pesticide on Tiananmen Square in protest over years of failed petitioning attempts.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Petitioner Yang Chuancong died on Saturday, two days after drinking pesticide on Tiananmen Square, fellow petitioners told RFA.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/veterans-09212015110945.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;&quot;There were 20 buses that took us to the Tongzhou district of Beijing, to the side of a road in the countryside,&quot; PLA veteran and long-time petitioner Yang Suiquan told RFA from one of the buses.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}