The “Chinese brutal reporting and Clearing Center” has been set up in the US as a focal point for grassroots officials

A group of Chinese pro-democracy activists in Los Angeles recently set up the “Chinese Brutal reporting clearing Center”. The sponsors said they would focus investigations on Chinese officials at the grassroots level and push the US government to impose sanctions on Chinese officials guilty of wrongdoing.

On December 10, 2020, a group of Chinese activists in the United States set up an organization called the China Torture Officials Whistleblower Center. According to the group’s website (cTOWC.org), it is a “global whistleblower center for exposing and punishing Cruel Chinese officials” and a “nongovernmental human rights organization that works globally to protect and assist human rights victims.” The organization will focus on three aspects: “receiving and investigating reports”, “protection and rescue work” and “exposing and punishing cruel officials”, so as to deter and crack down on Chinese officials who perpetrate evil acts on the public. It also hopes that Chinese people can report bad officials by submitting them on its website, by email or by direct mail.

On December 13, the reporter interviewed the two initiators of the organization and heard them introduce about the organization.

The term “cruel officials” comes from the Book Records of the Grand Historian, written about two thousand one hundred years ago. It refers to officials who used severe punishments and harsh methods. Among the “twenty-four histories” of ancient China, ten have special biographies of cruel officials, which record the life and deeds of such officials in history. According to the definition on the website of China Cruel Officials Reporting and Clearing Center, “cruel officials under the system of independent tyranny” in contemporary China refer to officials who “torture citizens by means of gangdom in the so-called official name and plunder national property in a corrupt way”.

Li Chuanliang, a former deputy mayor of Jixi, Heilongjiang province, who joined the PARTY in exile in the US this year, gave reporters a detailed account of what the group knew about the characteristics of modern China’s brutal officials.

Chuan-liang li said that the recent organization through the investigation and verification report situation of the Chinese people think that the contemporary Chinese judges have eight kinds of obvious behavior, which means “to the underworld case”, “corruption case”, “actively”, “torture”, “looted property”, “to suppress freedom of expression”, “religion” and “violent demolition”. They found that there were a large number of “grass-roots” officers from prefectures to villages, including many “village-level bullies” and the officers of grass-roots sub-police stations, policemen and auxiliary policemen.

The homepage of the website of “China Brutal reporting and Clearing Center” introduces the scope of the organization’s work. (From the organisation’s website)

Based on his own experience as an official under the Communist Party system, Mr Li gives this estimate of the proportion of brutal grassroots officials in China: “From village to village, district, county and prefectural levels are all at the executive level and are very common. This proportion, I say common, not 10, 20 percent, at least a third of ‘common’. From the industry [point of view], public security, inspection, public inspection law department, supervision, more obvious, the proportion is larger.”

Zheng Cunzhu, another founder of the Los Angeles-based group, an immigration consultant, told reporters that one of the group’s priorities is to investigate and expose the abuses of China’s grass-roots oppressors. He said they had set up a “clearing-house for cruel officials to report” because many ordinary people were unable to Sue after they clashed with local bullies and corrupt officials.

He said: “Our reporting center focuses on grass-roots officials who are closely related to ordinary people, such as those at the county, city and village levels. Because of their evil deeds, these people directly cause damage to the interests of the local people.”

And Mr. Li said that after investigations and reports of abuses by Chinese officials, they would also push for legal sanctions by The United States government: “We want to prepare something that can be verified under The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. So recently, we have seen some sanctions imposed by the US government, and we have taken them seriously. And we are prepared to do that on a regular basis. It is a very important task for us, and it is part of our task.”

The Magnitsky Act, passed by the U.S. Senate in 2015, authorizes the U.S. government to impose sanctions against human rights violators and prominent corrupt individuals abroad by means of prohibitions on entry, freezes and bans on transactions involving property in the United States. The bill was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in 2016. In July, the us government used the law to impose sanctions on four officials, including Chen Guanguo, xinjiang’s Communist Party secretary, and the Xinjiang Public Security Department for their persecution of Uighurs.