On May 6, two young appellants, Xing Mei and Xing Jian from Henan Province arrived at Tiananmen Square to kneel with their protest banner and call for the release of their mother. They were taken away and detained by local policemen and then released at three o'clock that same afternoon.
Witnesses said that they had seen the two youngsters kneeling in Tiananmen Square displaying a banner that had described unjust treatments they had received at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The children called out “We want our mother! We’ve been wronged!”
One witness said, “Three or four armed policemen had arrested the children and wrote down their personal information and the reasoning behind their protest. The youngsters were then taken to the Tiananmen Public Security Bureau.”
Around 3:00 p.m. Xing Mei and Xing Jian were released.
Mei and Jian’s parents are Xing Wangli and Xu Jincui. Their home is in Hongzhuang Village, Xixian County, Xinyang City of Henan.
In July 2002, when Jian was seven years old, he was hit by the car owned by Chen Ruzhou, an employee of the Xingyang Cotton and Flax Company. The accident caused serious internal injuries to Jian including an injured liver and a fracture of his right leg. The Xing family believed that the settlement awarded by the local traffic courts was unjust and appealed the case many times to the relevant authority. The local authority and courts refused to listen to the appeals of the Xing family. The family has since begun an appeal of their case to the higher authorities.
