Rule of Law Promotion Day is a holiday established by the Chinese regime so that Chinese citizens can gain greater awareness of their legal rights. This year the holiday was observed by police in Beijing abducting approximately 1,500 people who had come to seek information about their cases.
Ms. Wang Jun, a petitioner from Shenyang, Liaoning Province, described the action on Dec. 4. in Beijing.
She said, “The petitioners immediately after getting off the public transportation were all intercepted by the police, and then were stuffed into police buses. There were also numerous police cars.”
The police bus that carried Wang Jun directly went to a “black jail,” the Jiu Jing Zhuang Petitioner Diversion Center, and from there Wang Jun was taken to the Shenyang Liaison Office in Beijing.
Black jails are not legal jails but are buildings converted into use for detaining people off the record.
Wang Jun, having appealed for the past eight years, was too familiar with all the details of the entire process. She told a Voice of America reporter on the phone that she started appealing after she was fired in an underhanded deal. She has been homeless in Beijing for years. Without a source of income, she relies on begging. She was had hoped to discuss her case with a legal expert on Rule of Law Promotion Day.
On the phone, Mr. Fu, another petitioner from Jiangxi Province, said, “Isn’t today Rule of Law Promotion Day? Before we arrived at the TV station where the law consultation offices are located, many police were seen. Upon seeing us carrying bags, four policemen would lift one of us and throw us into a police car.”
Ms. Zhang Nengfang, a visitor from Hubei Province, said that she was fired randomly in 1997 and has appealed in Beijing 26 times. She said she is exhausted both mentally and physically by the repetitive appealing and is now considering jumping from the Tiananmen City Gate.
A 70-year-old female visitor from Wuhan burst into tears after just a few words after she had picked up the phone. She said, “I am a civilian, like an ant, while you, like several big elephants, repress the ant, me.”
Observers estimate approximately 1,500 petitioners were arrested in Beijing on Dec. 4.
Ms. Liu Jie, recipient of the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk and a petition leader from Heilongjiang Province told The Epoch Times reporter, “Today a major arrest was conducted in Beijing. In the morning, the police blocked off many places and many policemen got on the buses to check.
“Many petitioners who visited the CCTV station and the Beijing South Station were arrested. Then they were transferred and detained at Jiu Jing Zhuang. After registering their ID cards, they would wait for local government officials to escort them back.”
She said Dec. 4 was the Rule of Law Promotion Day, but it was also an “Injustice Festival.” Knowing too well that they would be arrested, the petitioners still wanted to use the fact of being captured to reflect the social reality.
With reporting by Voice of America.
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