During the week of October 1, China’s national holiday, Beijing police arrested two separate groups of petitioners from Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. Both groups were beaten in custody by secret police, although in Changsha one group gathered reinforcements and held the secret police in a standoff for several hours. Apprised of the beatings, local officials in Changsha opted to do nothing about them.
The first group was made up of 24 Sino-Vietnam War veterans from Hunan Province who came to Beijing to petition for benefits promised by the central government that were never provided by local authorities. On Sept. 30, they toured Beijing. The next day, Beijing police intercepted them.
They planned to go to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing to express their opinions after the national holiday was over.
One of the veterans, Xiong, told the Epoch Times, “We were wearing our military uniforms from before and were sightseeing. As we approached Xinhua Gate [The entrance to the regime’s leadership compound, Zhongnanhai], we ran into the police.
“They looked nervous and interrogated us because the 18th Congress will take place soon. They then took us to the Fuyoujie Police Station and later transferred us to Jiujingzhuang.”
Jiujingzhuang has large facilities dedicated to detaining petitioners.
A disabled veteran who wanted to be known only as Yi picked up the story.
“In less than an hour after we got to Jiujingzhuang, there were about 200 young men in their 20s with tattoos on their bodies,” Yi said. “They viciously beat us and dragged us into a vehicle. We were taken back to Hunan, and arrived at the Legal Training Center in Changsha, and the secret police beat us again. One of us had a broken rib.”
Changsha is around 1,000 miles from Beijing.
The Legal Training Center is a brain-washing facility under the control of the 610 Office, the extra-judicial entity charged with eradicating the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
Yi said secret police transferred the 24 veterans from Beijing to Hunan in two separate buses with about 20 secret police on each bus watching them. The veterans’ IDs and cell phones were confiscated and they were not allowed to eat, drink, talk, or use the toilets, he said.
“Most of us were beaten and injured. The secret police beat us in the bus on our way back, a dozen against one,” said Xiong.
When the 24 veterans reached Changsha on October 2, other veterans in Hunan were furious after learning that the Beijing police beat their fellow veterans. They gathered at the Legal Training Center and surrounded the secret police, demanding the local government punish the secret police.
Xiong said, “There were 120 veterans in Changsha who came to meet us. After seeing how we were treated, they got angry and gathered more veterans. The secret police were stranded in the bus. The stand-off went from 6 p.m. on Oct. 2 to about 1 a.m. on Oct. 3.”
In the end, the local government mobilized over 100 local police to escort the Beijing secret police away.
According to Xiong, veterans have petitioned many times and have always ended up being beaten by the secret police. Once, they used legal procedures and visited different levels of officials, but received no response.
Victims of Forced Demolitions Beaten
Veterans were not the only Changsha petitioners beaten by Beijing police during the national holiday.
Another group of 17 petitioners from Hunan’s capital came to Beijing to appeal the illegal demolition of their homes.
One of them, Liu Hua, told the Epoch Times that the Beijing police dragged them into a big bus, purportedly to check their IDs. The police then turned them over to the secret police. On the bus, the secret police beat Li Zhongyu, a senior petitioner, and the uniformed police did nothing.
The petitioners were then imprisoned in Jiujingzhuang. At 1 p.m. on Oct. 2, the petitioners were put on a bus and the secret police escorted them back to Changsha.
On October 3, as the bus was approaching Changsha, the petitioners called the local police reporting how the secret police bullied them. The petitioners waited for 11 hours before the local police showed up, but they did not put anything on the record or take any notes from the witnesses. The local police simply drove the bus away.
Local officials told the petitioners it was beyond their jurisdiction and advised them to go to Beijing to resolve the case.
Read the original Chinese article.
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