Silencing Complaints: Human Rights Abuses Against Petitioners in China 

A report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders

In its Special Series on Human Rights and the Olympics

Abstract

As China prepares to host the Olympics, this report finds that illegal interception and arbitrary detention of petitioners bringing grievances to higher authorities have become more systematic and extensive, especially in the host city of the Olympic Games, Beijing. 

“The most repressive mechanisms are now being employed to block the steady stream of petitioners from registering their grievances in Beijing. The Chinese government wants to erase the image of people protesting in front of government buildings, as it would ruin the meticulously cultivated impression of a contented, modern, prosperous China welcoming the world to the Olympics this summer,” said Liu Debo,¹ who participated in the investigations and research for this report.  

Petitioners, officially estimated to be 10 million, are amongst those most vulnerable to human rights abuses in China today. As they bring complaints about lower levels of government to higher authorities, they face harassment and retaliation. Officially, the Chinese government encourages petitions and has an extensive governmental bureaucracy to handle them. In practice, however, officials at all levels of government have a vested interest in preventing petitioners from speaking up about the mistreatment and injustices they have suffered. The Chinese government has developed a complex extra-legal system to intercept, confine, and punish petitioners in order to control and silence them, often employing brutal means such as assault, surveillance, harassment of family members, kidnapping, and incarceration in secret detention centers, psychiatric institutions and Re-education through Labor camps.  

The interception of petitioners violates a number of basic human rights, such as the rights to freedom of expression, to liberty and security of person, and to freedom from torture and other cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment.  Violations are the result of a combination of factors including unchecked state power, a system of incentives which link officials’ careers to their ability to minimize petitions against them, and the higher-level officials’ exchange of registered petitioners for bribes from lower-level officials.  

This report identifies the main causes of the human rights abuses committed against the petitioners, traces the legal or official justifications for these practices in relevant laws and regulations, and proposes policy and legal reforms to eradicate these abuses. 

In particular, CHRD urges the government to: 

● respect the rights exercised by petitioners, which are guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution

● immediately cease all illegal interception of petitioners

● reform the incentive system that encourages interception

● abolish the Re-education through Labor system,

● hold officials and those acting in an official capacity accountable for rights abuses committed against petitioners

● make complaints procedures impartial

●ensure petitioners have unhindered access to legal aid and to the legal system

● strengthen judicial independence and other channels to redress official injustices 

This report is based on the first report on the human rights situation of petitioners researched and written by veteran petitioners themselves as well as activists who have assisted them. Key source material includes a survey conducted in 2007 of a total of 3,328 petitioners in Beijing, twenty-eight interviews of petitioners, and the observations and experience of those who carried out the research. CHRD conducted further research on the laws and regulations regarding petitioning for the current report. 

About Olympics & Human Rights Special Series

This report is part of CHRD’s “Special Series on Human Rights & the Olympics”. In this series, CHRD will issue in-depth studies as part of its campaign to push for human rights improvement, raising international attention to rights abuses related to official preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The first of the series is ‘“Inciting Subversion of State Power”:

A Legal Tool for Prosecuting Free Speech in China’, published on January 8, 2008.  

Table of Contents

Introduction

Petitioning² has become common in reform-era China: Citizens bring grievances about lower levels of government to higher authorities for redress.³ Typically, petitioners first go to the government unit about which they are complaining. If they find the response unsatisfactory, they can then petition the relevant government units at higher levels higher, going level by level, until they reach the central government in Beijing.   

Petitioning is extensive.  It is difficult to estimate the number of petitioners in China due to a shortage of accurate official statistics. According to activists who follow trends of petitioning closely, “In China, it seems that all [government] departments with power have Letters and Visits Offices,” the offices responsible for handling petitions. According to Law Yearbook of China, between 2002 and 2006, 3.54 to 4.22 million petitions were received at various levels of the People’s Courts every year (see Table 1: Number of petitions received by various levels of the People's Courts). But the People’s Courts are only one of many government departments where petitioners went to lodge their complaints. Thus, the number of petitioning cases is undoubtedly far higher than 4.22 million. On November 4, 2004, Southern Weekend, a reputable, independent-minded newspaper, reported, “According to official statistics, there were over 10 million petitioning cases in China last year.” Considering that the Chinese government has a tendency to adjust downward numbers that may reflect negatively on its performance, there is reason to believe that the number of petitioning cases, and therefore the number of petitioners, could be several tens of millions. 

Table 1: Number of petitions received by various levels of the People's Courts⁴ 

Petitioners are amongst the social groups most vulnerable to abuses in China, as officials against whom they lodge complaints often wish to silence them and sometimes use drastic, brutal and illegal measures to do so. In October 2007, the authors conducted a survey of 3,328 petitioners from all over the country in Beijing. The survey was carried out in areas frequented by petitioners in Beijing, including the South Train Station, the Petitioners’ Village, and in front of various Letters and Visits Offices. Petitioners willing to take part in the survey filled out questionnaires. Interviews were also conducted. The sample selected for survey and interview was random. Petitioners surveyed and interviewed included both sexes of all ages (excluding those under the age of 18).     

The surveyed petitioners had been petitioning for at least one year and as many as fifty-one years. Over one-third of surveyed petitioners had experienced one form of abuse or another, including beatings, illegal detentions, convictions on trumped-up charges and Re-education through Labor (RTL), while 3.1% had been sent to psychiatric institutions⁵ 

During the interviews, petitioners were asked about their experiences. The current report includes twenty-eight stories told by petitioners. The cases chosen are representative of the sample and illustrate the types of human rights violations commonly suffered by petitioners both in Beijing and in their local jurisdictions, including torture, arbitrary detention, collective punishment, and deprivation of the right to life and privacy. 

This report is based on information from the survey, interviews and observations of the authors, who are long-time petitioners and activists who have assisted petitioners for many years.⁶ The report argues that the violations reported in the survey are not isolated; they are systematic, part of a coordinated effort by numerous law enforcement and administrative departments at all levels of the Chinese government. Not only are all levels of the government equipped with Letters and Visits Offices to receive petitioners, these offices have also played active roles in intercepting and detaining and even beating petitioners to ensure that complaints about local government officials do not reach higher authorities. In this report, “interception” of petitioners refers to all government actions to prevent petitioning as well as government actions to punish persistent petitioners. The information obtained leads to the conclusion that the system of intercepting petitioners has become almost as extensive as the Letters and Visits system itself.

Petitioners: An Overview

Why do petitioners petition?

Individuals become petitioners when they take action to deliver complaints to government authorities at higher levels about injustices they have experienced at the hands of local government after they judge they have no reasonable prospect of seeking redress at the local level.  The most common reasons for petitioning are:

1. Promised benefits or entitlements are not delivered, or legal and/or human rights are violated due to official corruption, government decisions or actions.  Common examples include:
   • Loss of farmland through appropriation by officials and commercial developers, often in the name of development
   • Loss of employment and corresponding benefits
   • Forced eviction and demolition of home or property without proper compensation, often to make way for development
   • Failure of government to make arrangements for the resettlement and livelihood of discharged  soldiers
   • Political persecution over the past half century
2. Judicial decisions that are perceived as unfair.
3. Official abuse of power or misconduct, such as corruption.

Who are the petitioners?

Petitioners are more likely to be women, old people and the disabled. Often, petitioners bring their children with them when they petition. In recent years, the causes of rights violations have changed to some extent. More rights violations are related to official corruption and the negative impact of economic development.  Correspondingly, the demographics of those affected and responding by petitioning has also changed, with more young and well-educated petitioners than previously.⁷  

Some of the surveyed petitioners have petitioned longer than 10 years, some even for decades. Petitioners who go to Beijing are often veteran petitioners. As we shall see from their stories in the appendices, the petitioners first started to petition when they perceived they had been wronged by the local government. First they petitioned the local government. Then, failing to gain redress and often suffering more abuses for petitioning, they took their grievances to higher authorities, eventually reaching Beijing. As they continued to appeal, they suffered ever more abuses, their original complaints snowballing to include a wide range against various levels of government.

How do petitioners live in Beijing?

In Beijing, most petitioners find accommodation close to the South Train Station as it is convenient to travel from there to Letters and Visits Offices at the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the State Council. In addition, accommodation near the South Train Station is relatively cheap. However, many petitioners cannot even afford that and resort to constructing makeshift shacks. Some become homeless. Some visit the Letters and Visits Offices during part of the day and spend the rest collecting trash from the city streets to sell for food. At night they live on the streets and under bridges. In the Beijing winter, when temperatures can dip to minus 10 degrees Celsius, they suffer from the cold.  Some petitioners have reportedly died during snowstorms. On November 22, 2003, when a number of Beijing Institute of Technology students visited an area where petitioners congregate at South Train Station, one petitioner told them, “Seven died in the last snowstorm; if there is another snowstorm, we really won’t know what to do!”⁸

Why do petitioners persist?

A major reason is because they believe so strongly that their rights have been violated, that they are willing to leave home to lodge complaints and seek redress at government facilities in far-away cities. But many soon find their rights further violated because they often become targets of official repression. Enduring violence and abuse might be worth it if the chance of obtaining justice were high. However, in a Southern Weekend article of November 4, 2004, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), says, “according to a survey…only 0.2% of petitioners solve their problems through petitioning.”  

Why do petitioners continue to press their claims, despite being subjected to various government abuses and enduring a harsh living environment, especially when their chances of obtaining justice appear remote, to say the least?     

One reason is that they firmly believe that they can attain justice through petitioning.⁹ Petitioners may also find that the longer they petition, the more their options diminish.  Returning home might expose them to official retaliation.¹⁰ In addition, the Letters and Visits system has survived as a result of the fact that for much of the modern era, the Chinese political system of government has provided virtually no fair, effective remedies for official malfeasance. An aspect of this is the weakness and lack of independence of the judiciary. Even where limited legal avenues for redress do exist, these may be difficult for people to use or judicial corruption may render them ineffective. In the eyes of petitioners, petitioning is often the only option for redress.

Petitioning: History, Legal Basis and Structure

History and Legal Basis

While the practice of petitioning has historical roots in pleas to the emperor, its modern incarnation dates back to 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In August 1949, the CCP leadership set up the Office of the Political Secretary at the Secretariat of the central government as the first government agency to deal specifically with petition letters from citizens. Before long, the volume of petitions overwhelmed the capacity of the office, and a number of offices in the Central Committee took over the responsibility of processing petitions.¹¹ By 1954, departments directly under the central government had established Letters and Visits Offices. Many Letters and Visits Offices were also established at provincial, county and city levels. Between 1954 and 1957, due to agricultural collectivization and other revolutionary events, the volume of petitions increased, and the number of agencies dealing with petitions increased correspondingly.  

In September and October 1963, the State Council released the first regulations on Letters and Visits.¹² In the Chinese Constitution of 1982, petitioning was made a constitutionally-protected right. Article 41 of the Constitution stipulates that citizens have the right to “criticize and make suggestions” to the government.¹³ In 1995, the State Council promulgated the “Regulations on Letters and Visits” (国务院信访条例), which corresponded with a variety of regulations and practices on Letters and Visits at various government levels and created a more systematic and coherent framework. On January 5, 2005, the State Council revised the 1995 rules, issuing new “Regulations on Letters and Visits” (国务院颁布《信访条例》, hereafter referred to as “the Regulations”) which define the current system. 

Both the 1995 and 2005 Regulations on Letters and Visits define the scope of petitioning, outline the mechanisms for processing petitions, and describe acceptable and unacceptable behavior of both petitioners and Letters and Visits staff. However, the two sets of regulations differ in a number of areas. The 2005 Regulations stipulate in greater detail the procedures for handling petitions. They also expand on what constitutes unacceptable behavior by both petitioners and Letters and Visits staff and the corresponding punishments for such behaviors. The 2005 Regulations also link an official’s or a government unit’s performance in handling petitions to official performance reviews. As described below, certain aspects of the 2005 Regulations actually result in greater persecution of petitioners (see Vagueness of the Regulations on Letters and Visits).  

The volume of petitions has varied over time. In addition to the aforementioned increase between 1954 and 1957, the volume of petitions also rose twice after the start of economic reforms in 1979. The first peak was between 1979 and 1982 after the Cultural Revolution, when the CCP rehabilitated individuals purged from the CCP or reinstated officials demoted or sent into internal exile. This triggered petitions from tens of thousands of people persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. The second peak was reached after 2003, when the Custody and Repatriation system that controlled population movement by detention and forced return to their places of household registration was abolished, thus allowing people to travel more freely.¹⁴

Figure 1: Timeline of Letters and Visits System

Structure

As the regulatory framework for Letters and Visits system becomes more formalized, more and more Letters and Visits Offices are being established at various levels and departments of the Chinese government. Article 6 of the Regulations indicates the potential extent of the system:  

“Any people’s government at or above the county level shall set up a department for letters and visits. The relevant department of the people’s government at or above the county level and the people’s government of the town or township shall…respectively assign a unit responsible for the work regarding letters and visits…or individuals with specific responsibility for work in this field.”  

Figure 1 shows the five administrative divisions in China and the number of units under each division. If we assume that each administrative unit at township level or above runs one Letters and Visits Office, that makes at least 44,866 Letters and Visits Offices stretching from the local to the central government levels. (See Figure 2.)  This is undoubtedly an underestimate because in practice, as Article 6 of the regulations indicates, there can be more than one Letters and Visits Office in each unit, as any relevant department can have one and the central government has many Letters and Visits Offices for its separate ministries and commissions. 

In recent years, the number of Letters and Visits Offices and of their staff has rapidly increased. Letters and Visits Offices are not only found within the government; even the All-China Federation of Labor Unions and the All-China Women’s Federation and their lower level entities have established Letters and Visits departments.  

In addition, top local Party and government leaders have also become directly involved in processing petitions in order to preserve an image of “harmony” and quell simmering conflicts at the grassroots level.

Figure 2: Administrative divisions in China as of 2005 (with number of units under each division)¹⁵

Interception of petitioners: History, Mechanism and Methods

Interception: History

As the Letters and Visits system has grown, so has the number of means of preventing petitioning and punishing persistent petitioners. To prevent information about rights abuses committed at the local level from reaching higher authorities, local authorities have always been motivated to intercept petitioners. However, the phenomenon of large-scale and systematic interception of petitioners is relatively new. In 2003, fearing protests at the time of sensitive political events in Beijing, such as the annual session of the National People’s Congress, CCP Congresses, and international events, officials in the central government began ordering local Letters and Visits Offices to prevent petitioners from going to Beijing. Then the Custody and Repatriation System was abolished.  It had previously been one of the main mechanisms used to detain people who were away from their places of registered residence and return them to their hometowns, and in its absence, other means had to be found to remove people from cities where they were not wanted. The new, shadowy system of “interception” (jiefang) emerged as a result of the combination of these two factors.   

Local Letters and Visits Offices took on the additional responsibility of intercepting petitioners who intended to go to Beijing. They often employed violence to do so and were assisted by local branches of the Public Security Bureau (PSB). In recent months, as the Olympics approach, intercepting operations have become increasingly systematic, especially in Beijing.  

Although Article 3 of the Regulations on Letters and Visits states that the government at all levels shall “keep free-flowing channels for letter-writers and visitors and provide convenience for the letter-writers” and that “no organization or individual may retaliate against letter-writers or visitors,” in practice, government agencies, which run the intercepting system, have used a variety of methods to impede petitioners and punish them for complaining about official misconduct and social ills.

Interception: Offices

Interception does not exist legally or publicly, but evidence points to a rapidly expanding operation, extensive in scope. In recent years, because the number of petitions has kept rising, interception has become a major area of responsibility for various local governments, and many departments at different levels are involved. Local CCP organs and government agencies mobilize substantial resources to intercept petitioners. Amongst administrators in some localities in China, there is a saying: “Guard against flood, guard against fire, guard against petitioners.”  Petitioners are treated as a threat to the image of “a harmonious and stable society” which the Party wishes to promote.  

The following are agencies specifically focused on interception: 

• All local (i.e. non-central government) Letters and Visits Offices

All local Letters and Visits offices are responsible for intercepting petitioners. If the staff fail to appease the petitioners and persuade them to drop their complaints, they often resort to forcibly preventing the petitioners from proceeding to higher authorities in provincial capitals or in Beijing. Thus, all intercepting activities involve the participation of the relevant local Letters and Visits Offices. 

• The PSB, the Procuratorate, the judiciary, the armed police and criminal gangs

The “judicial agencies” (sifa jiguan) engaged in law enforcement often collaborate to suppress petitioners. Especially as the number of collective petitions has increased, stopping such groups from petitioning has become one of their routine responsibilities. Sources indicate that the agencies often hire criminal gangs and thugs to intimidate, beat and even kill petitioners on their behalf.  

• The local “liaison offices”

Liaison offices are offices of local governments located in provincial capitals and in Beijing.  They handle general affairs between different levels of government. With the expansion and systematization of the interception of petitioners, one of the new major responsibilities of the liaison offices is to intercept petitioners. To strengthen their ability to do this, they have added staff from their local Letters and Visits Offices and local PSBs. A problem for many liaison offices has been what to do when they catch petitioners, and one answer has been to find places to incarcerate them.  Some of the liaison offices have been turned into temporary detention facilities. Others have rented gloomy and remote basements or inns, which have become known as “black jails” in Beijing to detain petitioners.¹⁶ (see Arbitrary detention)  All of these forms of detention are entirely illegal. 

• The government units directly responsible for the alleged rights violations described in the petitions

The units about which petitioners complain have an added incentive to prevent them from furthering their petitions; for example, township authorities who have expropriated and sold rural land for profit, leaving farmers impoverished and unemployed. Having wronged the petitioners, they are especially motivated to prevent them from exposing such wrongdoing.

Interception: Staff

The individual “interceptors” are staff from diverse government units at various levels. They can be categorized into two groups, regular and temporary interceptors. 

• Regular interceptors
  • From all Letters and Visits Offices and liaison offices, they patrol various government offices and bus and train stations where petitioners congregate, intercepting petitioners upon orders or when encountering perceived “troublemakers.”
  • Police officers are allocated the duty of interception or assisting interception under the circumstances described above.
  • Government units directly responsible for alleged rights violations allocate some staff to intercepting petitioners complaining about their units.

• Temporary interceptors

When organized, collective petitioning occurs, or when there are important or politically-sensitive events, lower-level government authorities temporarily re-assign staff to form “Interception Working Committees” (jiefang gongzuozu). The committees are usually led by leaders of the local PSB, Procuratorate, Judiciary and Committee on Politics and Law (zhengfa weiyuanhui). Sometimes, the working committees are led by the heads of the local Letters and Visits Offices.  

For example, every March when the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are held in Beijing, the local officials lead their Interception Working Committees to Beijing to round up and return petitioners to their local areas.

Harassment, Intimidation and Interception of Petitioners

In Beijing, petitioners live in constant fear of persecution by interceptors from their home areas and the Beijing police. After they are intercepted, some are beaten, even to death in several documented cases. They are often detained in Beijing or in their home areas after being forcibly returned.  They may be placed in psychiatric institutions, RTL camps, “black jails” or “educational classes” without charge or trial. Especially during important political events and holidays, the Beijing police and interceptors scour areas frequented by petitioners. The most frequent forms of harassment and intimidation of petitioners and methods of interception are described below.

Harassment of petitioners’ families

Interceptors contact petitioners’ families and relatives and threaten them that if they do not stop the petitioning, they will lose their jobs (at state agencies or private or state-controlled companies). For example, in June 2007, while four elderly women, representing 338 other dismissed workers at a former crane factory in Qiqihaer, Heilongjiang Province, were petitioning in Beijing, their homes were monitored by local police and their children were threatened by the local government that if they didn’t call their mothers and ask them to return, they would be fired from their jobs. Pressure on families is applied in various ways. Because of their petitioning, Li Guirong’s (李桂荣, see Appendix I: Cases of petitioners violently beaten and tortured) 5-year-old daughter is currently being detained at a “welfare home” and Gu Xiangqin’s (顾相芹, see Appendix II: Cases of petitioners sent to psychiatric institutions) parents and brothers were tied up and badly beaten by the head of her local production team.

Surveillance

Officials wishing to intercept petitioners enlist neighbors, thugs and local government officials to monitor petitioners 24 hours a day. Technology is also employed: monitoring and wire-tapping devices and surveillance video cameras are used to monitor petitioners. The aim of surveillance is to monitor the activities of petitioners and keep track of their whereabouts. Research indicates that almost all petitioners, including those whose cases are included in this report, have experienced various forms of surveillance.

Kidnapping

Interceptors are dispatched to forcibly kidnap and return petitioners to their home areas. Research shows that most petitioners returned home were kidnapped by interceptors.

Assault

Interceptors often violently beat petitioners, sometimes until they are unconscious. (See Appendix I: Cases of petitioners violently beaten and tortured)

Murder

There is evidence to suggest that in some cases, interceptors have beaten or tortured petitioners to death. Official interceptors are either directly involved or hire others to carry out the killings. Staff at Letters and Visits Offices have also been found to have participated in the use of sometimes deadly violence.  

In June 2001, Liu Jie, a Heilongjiang petitioner, was threatened with murder by staff from the Letters and Visits Office at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in Beijing. In a car into which she was dragged, an official, angered by Liu Jie’s resistance, pointed a gun at Liu’s head several times, and, threatening to kill her, shouted in rage, “Every year, we kill about 200 petitioners!” (see Appendix I: Cases of petitioners violently beaten and tortured).  

At the start of 2005, six corpses were found when the moat near the State Council and National People’s Congress was cleaned. Petitioning materials, well-preserved in plastic bags, were found on the bodies. ¹⁷ Petitioners interviewed believe that these corpses were petitioners killed near the central government Letters and Visits Offices.  

An eyewitness, Mr. R (whose name is withheld for his safety), regularly helped petitioners at the Letters and Visits Office at the Supreme People’s Court to draft appeals. Mr. R reported, “Between June and December 2005, I saw five people beaten to death at the Letters and Visits Office at the Supreme People’s Court. Two were killed by interceptors banging their heads on the walls. It was really horrible to see!” 

There are well-documented cases of petitioners who died as a result of torture. Shanghai petitioners Duan Huimin (段惠民, see Case Study 1) and Chen Xiaoming (陈小明)¹⁸ were allegedly tortured to death while in detention in 2007.

Case Study 1: Petitioner Beaten to Death

Shanghai petitioner Duan Huimin (段惠民) was laid-off from a state owned company when the company was privatized. Duan began petitioning for appropriate compensation for his job loss.

While petitioning in Beijing with his sister, he was intercepted and severely beaten by a dozen Shanghai police on November 3, 2006. The day after, Duan was sent back to Shanghai and criminally detained at Shanghai PSB Huangpu District Detention Center for “provoking and making trouble.” While in detention, Duan became seriously ill—he had been bleeding and vomiting blood. Duan and his family had repeatedly requested that he be allowed to see a doctor, but their requests were denied by the head of the Detention Center. On November 29, Duan was sent to one year of RTL for “disturbing social security and order.”

Duan was finally allowed medical treatment on December 28, about 60 days after he suffered severe injuries from police beatings. However, by then he was so seriously ill that he died soon after on January 2, 2007.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] 下一页