On May 25, 39 petitioners from Shanghai were repatriated after being detained in Beijing. At the Shanghai Railway Station, more than fifty police officers were waiting to escort them to the Shanghai relief station.
“Petitioner” is a term unique to China today, referring to ordinary people in the lower strata of society who have been oppressed by the local government, unable to seek justice and are compelled to go to Beijing to petition.
Among these repatriated petitioners was Guo Guoping, a retired Shanghai University teacher and rights activist. He went to Beijing on May 22 and was intercepted by the police at Dongjiaomin Lane in Beijing on the 23rd to check his identification. He was then taken to the local police station, where many Shanghai petitioners had already been intercepted. That same day, the Furui Street Police Station in Beijing also detained many Shanghai petitioners. They were all taken by the Shanghai Office in Beijing and repatriated.
Guo Guoping told Epoch Times, “The Chinese Communist Party blatantly persecutes petitioners defending their rights. This is a serious violation of human rights. The 39 petitioners sent back this time were met by over fifty police officers at the Shanghai Railway Station. They were monitoring us, not allowing us to move freely or leave in groups. This is a typical and notorious act of crackdown and persecution of rights activists by Shanghai, including their arbitrary one-month detention.”
Petitioning is a fundamental right granted to citizens by law, which should not be violated. However, in a society where the law is unjust, justice is absent, morality is lost, and money rules, citizens’ interests cannot be protected. Some petitioners even die on this road to seeking justice.
“Just the other day, someone named Gui from Huangpu District came back. After being repatriated, he was taken to the police station, then handed over to the relocation team. For unknown reasons, he died, unreasonably, at the relocation team,” Guo Guoping said.
China joined the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006. During the period from 2024 to 2026, China served as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. However, Chinese citizens are deprived of any rights provided by the Chinese Constitution.
Guo Guoping further stated, “Every citizen in China has been deprived of all political rights, democratic rights by the Chinese Communist Party. Because we have no right to be informed, no right to supervision, no right to report and accuse, no right to administrative gathering, no right to strike, boycott, or protest, no freedom of speech, no right to vote, none of the eight fundamental civil rights.”
Guo Guoping believes, “The Chinese Communist Party is a schizophrenic maniac, showing one face in front and another behind, following one set of rules for the leadership and another for the common people, each layer is like this; lying and bragging to the leadership, to those below, they use intimidation and deception, treating petitioners as terrorists.”
“There are many petitioners going to the Beijing Furui Street Petition Bureau every day,” said Ms. Wang, a petitioner from Henan, to Epoch Times, “People queue up there even before dawn, a large number of people. Once they and a few other petitioners arrived at the entrance of the Petition Bureau at 4:30 AM, even before sunrise, there were already four to five hundred people waiting in line, and there were plainclothes interceptors smoking and chatting on the side of the road.”
Mr. Wu, a petitioner from Anhui, also told Epoch Times, “Every year during sensitive events and Communist Party meetings, the police take these petitioners to travel out of town, actually detaining them in local hotels, providing food and accommodation. Now that the government is short of money, they manage to keep these people detained in remote areas locally. In fact, the Communist Party is afraid, afraid that the outside world will know that they are persecuting so many kind-hearted people, afraid of their ugly deeds being exposed. Therefore, as long as the Communist regime does not disintegrate, the evil persecution will not stop.”