On the eve of the closing of the “two sessions”, a politically sensitive period, security continues to be tense. Li Meiqing, a victim of forced demolition in Shijiazhuang, Nanyuan Township, Fengtai District, Beijing, was taken to the emergency room after being intimidated by stabilization agents and swallowing a large amount of sleeping pills. Her sister is Li Huanjun, who stopped a car to cry out for justice during Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s visit to the United States more than five years ago. Li Meiqing, who has been defending her rights for many years, took a large amount of sleeping pills during the two sessions and was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment, drawing the attention of many rights activists and overseas media.
Li Huanjun: Sister was illegally imprisoned before and after taking drugs
Li Huanjun, a member of the New Citizens Movement in exile in the United States, told Voice of America on March 10 that her sister Li Meiqing swallowed a large amount of sleeping pills a day earlier at the Nanyuan Township Government in Beijing. She did so after losing her freedom and being pressured, intimidated, and provoked by stabilization agents.
According to Li Huanjun, Li Meiqing, who has been fighting for her rights in Beijing for many years, has been monitored by stability guards during politically sensitive periods and sometimes taken away for several days before being released. Before the two sessions, Li fled her place of residence and was arrested and imprisoned by local authorities two days later.
It is understood that Li was taken to Nanyuan Hospital for gastric lavage after taking a large amount of sleeping pills, and was sent to 307 Hospital for examination after being released from danger, and then returned to Nanyuan Hospital. Li Huanjun said Li Meiqing remained drowsy, dizzy and weak the day after she was rescued.
The Voice of America reporter tried to contact Li Meiqing, who was still in a hospital bed, but her cell phone did not speak when she was connected. According to Li Huanjun, there were police and security guards watching her in her sister’s hospital room.
The cell phone of Xu Wanchao, secretary of the party branch of Shijiazhuang village, was also picked up for nearly a minute, with the other side silent. The Voice of America then dialed the phone number of Nanyuan Shigurazhuan Police Station, the person who answered the phone said he hadn’t heard and didn’t understand Li Meiqing’s situation, but would report the reporter’s call to the leadership.
Li Huanjun said that she and her sister Li Meiqing had been subjected to various ordeals since their Home was demolished, including beatings, abuse, physical harm and mental torture, and had survived. The company’s main business is to promote the development of the company’s products and services.
Stabilization escalates in sensitive times
For nearly two decades, the authorities have been on high alert every year when China holds politically sensitive periods such as the two sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Party Congress or the June 4th anniversary. Dissidents, human rights defenders, human rights lawyers, petitioners, Falun Gong practitioners, and some freelance writers and artists, among other so-called sensitive figures, have faced stabilization and control measures by the authorities, and this has almost become the norm.
Li Huanjun was originally an early childhood teacher. In November 2012, during the 18th Communist Party Congress, Li Huanjun, then 37 years old, and her sister Li Meiqing were detained for several days in a “black prison” in Changxindian by the police of their household registration. On New Year’s Eve of that year, Li Huanjun went to Tiananmen Square and Xinhua Gate in Zhongnanhai, the office of the Communist Party’s central leadership, to pay a tearful “New Year’s call” to Xi Jinping, stating his grievances.
Li Huanjun complained in the U.S., stopping Xi’s motorcade to voice her grievances
Li Huanjun said she had to go into exile in the United States to “file a complaint” after years of unsuccessful defense of her rights in Beijing and being brutally persecuted. She said, “Xu Wanchao, the village chief, said, ‘Go to the United Nations and sue where you like. This is the way he showed me. So I came here, to the United Nations, to the President to sue.”
After coming to the United States, Li Huanjun not only went to the United Nations to express her demands, but also stopped Xi Jinping’s motorcade in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 26, 2015, to voice her grievances and submit her complaint, successfully performing a modern version of the “People’s Daughter Stopping the Car to Voice Her Grievances” living newspaper drama.
Li Huanjun recalled that she rushed from the roadside to the front of the motorcycle convoy just after the escort had passed, and the entire convoy came to a halt as the police came and tackled her and dragged her away for almost five minutes. After the convoy drove away, two accompanying officers came over and found Li Huanjun, who was still at the site of the incident, and other Chinese people who tried to stop the car to shout their grievances, saying that the leaders had asked them to come and understand the situation, accepting the petition Li Huanjun was going to submit and saying that they would report to the leaders and coordinate with the following to solve the problem.
Talking about why he stopped the government convoy and alerted Xi Jinping, who had come all the way to visit, Li Huanjun said, “I just want to put the petition directly into his hands. I want him to know what I want, how hard the Chinese people are suffering, and how dark it is under the lights in Beijing. Let him investigate the investigation. Xi Jinping is fighting corruption and punishing the villains and village bullies. I hope he will first fix the feet of the Son of Heaven. You can’t even fix your own feet clean, you still fix other places?”
However, Li Huanjun said that after filing her complaint, the problems she reflected have not been solved, and the village committee of Shijiazhuang has intensified the situation by stopping her and her Family‘s salary and her family’s health insurance, and even her daughter’s reunion with her in the United States has been prohibited by the authorities on the grounds of endangering national security.
The Beijing-based rights activist, who is in exile in the United States, said she was disappointed by the lack of response from the Communist Party’s top leaders after receiving the petition. Xi Jinping is the biggest, number one leader in China, right? He can’t even solve the little problems of us ordinary people. I don’t know what to say about him.”
Visitors arrested for maintaining stability during the two sessions
Whenever the politically sensitive period of Beijing’s two sessions approaches, authorities take stabilization actions such as rounding up and forcibly repatriating petitioners from all over the country. This year’s two sessions are seen as an important part of the personnel layout before the change of power at the top of the 20th Communist Party, and the authorities have clearly stepped up stability maintenance measures.
Wu Xiaoyan, a petitioner from Jiangsu province who has been defending her rights for years after losing her property to forced demolition, told the Voice of America that she was illegally abducted by plainclothes police officer Yao Shun and others from Suzhou City’s Canglang Police Station at around 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 26 (Lantern Festival) while walking normally on the sidewalk near Beijing’s Lingjing Hutong. Wu Xiaoyan had been beaten and suffered a miscarriage as a result of her petition, and was also laid off and unemployed for exposing the evil deeds of local officials.
On the afternoon of the Lantern Festival, Liaoning rights defender Jiang Jiawen was intercepted in Beijing before the two sessions. Jiang has been arrested dozens of times, imprisoned and sent to reeducation through labor, but still insists on defending his rights and petitioning, and is known as the “champion of reeducation through labor” in China’s human rights community.
As the National People’s Congress approached, Zhu Yongjian, a veteran who had been sent to a psychiatric hospital six times, told VOA that he was going to Beijing to see a lawyer, but was violently stopped at Suzhou North Station by Ma Wenguo, the head of the Xukou Street petition office in Suzhou, and other leaders of the police station. He was sent home from the Xukou police station at nearly 10:00 p.m. and was surrounded by unidentified people.
Comment: High-pressure stability maintenance = planting a fire
In the past decade or two, the real estate economy has expanded rapidly across China due to housing development and rural urbanization projects, with prices rising in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities and their surrounding areas.
The Chinese Communist Party media CCTV launched a long feature report many years ago, “At the grassroots level in China, land requisition and relocation and letter and petition are both called the “number one problem”. These two “number one problems” are often intertwined.”
Yang Zili, an independent scholar and commentator in exile in the United States, believes that the Chinese Communist Party’s usual escalation tactics to maintain stability during sensitive periods can only achieve a momentary appearance of calm through high-handedness and harsh control, but in reality are sowing the seeds of hatred and unrest, which is tantamount to drinking hemlock to quench thirst.
He told Voice of America that if the problem of unfair compensation in forced demolitions is not properly solved and the economic contradictions that affect a wide range of people are not fundamentally resolved, it will be unsustainable to maintain stability with high-handedness, and the accumulated contradictions are bound to explode one day.
“Because the people do not trust the government anymore, you harm their interests.” Yang Zili said, “They bury this conflict in their hearts. This psychological state of hating the government and hating the government will spread and will not go away. Even this (victimized) family, one family at a Time, will inherit this conflict to the next generation. This will sow the seeds of more unrest. It’s certainly not a coincidence that something like Yang Jia appeared.”
Since last summer, a number of villas in the suburbs of Beijing alone have been demolished without compensation in the face of collective protests by owners. Among them were the owners of the old Beijing courtyard area in Huairou District’s Shuijangcheng and the Xiangtang Cultural Village in Changping District, who shouted, “Unless you step over our corpses,” as they blocked the demolition crew, “this government is unprecedented in the past and present!”
On the eve of the two sessions, China’s Ministry of Public Security issued a 32-point ban on citizen petitions, listing what it called illegal petitions from all sides. The official media also echoed that normal petitioning is a citizen’s right, but must be expressed in accordance with the law, while citing Supreme Court precedents stating that petitioning in non-petitioning places seriously disrupts the order of social administration and constitutes the crime of provocation and nuisance. The article, “Is it illegal to petition in Beijing during the two sessions? “This kind of transgressive and aggressive way of petitioning seriously damages the image of normal petitioners and not only fails to solve the problem, but also expands the problem and even allegedly violates the law.
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