Upset China petitioners stage risky protests

updated 7:58 p.m. ET March 11, 2009

BEIJING - White leaflets flutter to the street in downtown Beijing, each one a snapshot of someone's misery: a shuttered factory, a sick child, a real estate swindle.

The petitions — testimonies of public grievances — are presented to the Chinese government in a centuries-old ritual along with hope that back wages will be paid, the child will be treated or a corrupt official will be punished.

But the appeals rarely work, and mounting frustration among petitioners in Beijing is turning into desperation. Petitioners are staging riskier protests, like unfurling banners, or worse. At least two have cut themselves with sharp objects in public. Some have set themselves on fire.

"The petition offices often lie to us," said Li Li, who has been trying to clear her husband's name for two years on what she says were trumped up embezzlement charges. "They treat us like footballs, kicking us from department to department, so we don't trust them anymore. We don't want to go through official channels."

On a recent weekday afternoon, Li Li and a small band of other petitioners flung their grievances into the sky and quickly melted into the crowd of a downtown shopping street before they could be arrested.

Police stopped traffic to gather the sheaves of paper, then stuffed them into a garbage can.

The practice of Chinese traveling to Beijing to ask the central government for redress dates to the days when people could petition the emperor.

These days, the legions of petitioners have come to symbolize China's failure to build a justice system that ordinary Chinese consider fair. Local governments and courts ignore problems or are corrupt, while the press is muzzled by censorship.

Millions of letters, visits
The government says it receives 3 million to 4 million letters and visits from petitioners each year, but rights groups put the figure in the tens of millions.

Efforts to submit grievances to the main petition office in Beijing typically peak in March when the legislature meets because petitioners believe the claims will get more attention.

Instead, the occasion has become high season for brutal reprisals.

Petitioners are routinely chased by hostile provincial-level officials or thugs-for-hire who round them up before they can reach the central government. Officials back home fear the complaints may cost them a promotion or a job or trigger investigations.

These "interceptors" sometimes detain petitioners in hotels or unofficial "black jails" until they can be sent home.

A gated compound of nondescript concrete buildings in northeast Beijing is where Li Chunxia says she was detained several times while fighting a court ruling that made her garment factory state property after a business dispute. She described meager meals of plain flour buns and said she saw guards there beat other detainees.

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