Officials are now on the lookout for appellants who recently went to Beijing University to protest. The protest broke out after the university’s professor and director of the Forensic Department, Sun Dongdong, claimed that more than 99 percent of appellants in China were mentally insane.
Appellants File Complaints
Chinese officials have been on a mass manhunt since April 17. So far, only a few appellants remain at Beijing University. A large number appealed to different office levels, including the State’s Appeal Office, the High Court, and the State’s Health Department, demanding that Sun Dongdong apologize in person and pay them financial compensation.
On the afternoon of April 22, appellants Gao Qingping from Shanxi Province; Tian Baoqin and Le Shufen from Shenyang City, Li Xiaozhen and his wife, Yuan Kangsheng, and Zhu Li from Guangdong Province, went to the State Health Department to file a complaint against Sun Dongdong for damaging their reputation.
Li Xiaozheng, an appellant from Guangdong Province said, “Appellants are not mentally insane. Sun Dongdong needs to apologize to us in person.”
Authorities Hunting ‘Organizer’
According to the regime’s internal documents, recently exposed on the Internet, police were instructed to carefully check and take each appellant’s statements, in an effort to collect more evidence to suppress the appellants and identify the organizer.
Most appellants were sent back to their hometowns. Some were detained, while others went missing.
During an interview, one of the appellants, Ms. Zhou Li, indicated that the appellants’ actions had raised great concern from the central Chinese regime, and that appellants went to Beijing University on their own accord. The protest was not pre-organized, nor did it need to be pre-organized.
According to another appellant, Ms. Gao Qingping, she had been interrogated several times while being detained by police. She was asked to identify suspects from a pile of pictures. She said, “I really don’t know. I don’t know anyone.”
Incident Background
China News Weekly, the regime’s most authoritative media, published an article by Sun Dongdong on March 23, stating that “For those veteran appellants, I can responsibly say that at least 99 percent of them have mental problems, and they are all psychotically paranoid.”
Sun’s remarks have received waves of complaints from Chinese appellants. To prevent this from turning into a political incident, the regime has been arresting and interrogating appellants visiting Beijing, while raiding areas where out-of-town appellants live.
Appellants are concerned that if remarks made by Sun Dongdong, the regime’s official scholar, were to be acknowledged as fact, appellants could one day be put into mental institutions by authorities.
Read original article in Chinese.
