In order to protect their rights, mainland Chinese petitioners go to Beijing day and night, leading to a constant crowd of petitioners in front of the National Bureau of Letters and Calls in Beijing every day. Especially around sensitive dates, the stability maintenance mechanism becomes even more severe under the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Recently, there have been reports from various regions of petitioners going missing after arriving in Beijing, with petitioners from Shanghai being sent back in groups.
On the afternoon of June 30, Yang Ziyu, a veteran from Yubei District, Chongqing, was detained after undergoing an identity check at the Qianmen Police Station in Dongcheng District, Beijing. Currently, his phone is turned off and reporters are unable to contact him.
Yang Ziyu’s cousin called the Qianmen Police Station to inquire about the situation and was told by the officer on the line that Yang Ziyu had been transferred to the office in charge of sending petitioners back to their hometowns in Beijing. Yang’s cousin argued that the police’s actions were illegal, but the police insisted that they were just following standard procedure by transferring him to the designated office. When Yang’s cousin mentioned that the office had been shut down in 2015, the police did not respond.
On June 29 at around 10:30 am, Chongqing Yuzhong District petitioner Liu Chaoyu was detained in the police station of Beijing West Railway Station after her ID was checked upon arrival. She urgently sent out distress signals asking other petitioners to report her situation to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and the municipal complaint hotline, demanding her freedom and to be released from the police station at the West Railway Station.
Thanks to the concern of her fellow petitioners, Liu Chaoyu was able to leave the police station at Beijing West Railway Station that same day.
On June 25 at around 1:50 pm, Wang Fuli, a petitioner from Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, was forcibly taken away by five to six unidentified individuals in a Buick commercial vehicle (license plate number: 京JM5652) outside the police station on Xichangan Street, Xicheng District, Beijing. There is still no information on the whereabouts of Wang Fuli.
Zeng Wen, a junior officer from the Judicial Bureau of Liangping District, Chongqing, who is in the late stage of cancer, was arbitrarily detained by the Dongjiaomin Alley Police Station in Dongcheng District, Beijing around 1 am on June 21.
Shanghai, with the highest number of petitioners in the country, has seen a significant number of petitioners journeying to Beijing recently, with over thirty individuals being sent back every day.
On June 29, Shanghai petitioner Cui Qun was also among those sent back. She told a reporter from Epoch Times, “Today (29th), I returned to Shanghai in the morning, and the 39 people who were sent back with me were taken away by various districts and streets. According to the office in Beijing, in the past few days, groups of over thirty people have been sent back. Many innocent petitioners are suffering injustices, old petitioners’ issues remain unresolved, and new petitioners continue to emerge.”
Cui Qun’s residence is located on plot 142 in Hongkou District, Shanghai. The land was auctioned off in 2003, and in 2007, the land unit obtained a demolition permit. However, by 2015, it was claimed to be confiscated for public interest, while the actual land use was for commercial and office purposes, deceiving the residents with dual-purpose land use and denying them the legitimate right to be resettled nearby.
Cui Qun filed complaints about this issue and was met with retaliation, being illegally detained 12 times for a total of 295 days; she suffered a broken finger due to being forcefully dragged during a highway robbery and sustained hearing impairment from multiple beatings while in custody.
She expressed, “Rights activists persistently raise these issues to higher authorities in hopes of finding fairness, democracy, and freedom. We hope that every person’s injustices will be promptly resolved.”