Police officers who say they were treated unfairly by the Communist Party’s judicial system joined other Beijing petitioners on March 28 and 29 to condemn corruption and seek justice.
In China, petitioning is a last resort for people whose legal misfortunes have not been adequately dealt with by local authorities. They can travel to Beijing to seek redress at the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, which is supposed to report matters to the relevant departments and resolve such issues.
After the Party’s “two conferences” concluded last month, 20 police petitioners from across China held events at the bureau, and also the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, protesting alongside petitioners with other grievances.
Policemen from Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hubei and Guizhou provinces wore large, easily visible cards on their chests which said, “Wronged police from across the nation.” Standing in front of the national petitioning headquarters behind crowd control barriers, they held signs and banners with messages such as: “Police victims of corruption call on justice to join our fight against judicial corruption,” “Vindicate police who suffered from wrongful sentences,” and “We strongly request public hearings and retrials in accordance with the law.”
He Zuhua, a former policeman at Xinxiang Public Security Bureau in Henan Province, was sentenced to one year after being framed for fraud. He told The Epoch Times that the issue still has not been redressed after 12 years.
“We went to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and held anti-corruption banners, but the staff there didn’t even care,” He Zuhua said.
Zhao Hongyan, once a policeman at Shenyang Public Security Bureau’s Tiexi precinct station, was laid off 13 years ago for what he says was no reason. He sued the director of the Public Security Bureau for practicing favoritism and fraud, but told The Epoch Times that nothing came of it.
Zhao added, “If even as police we are persecuted, you can imagine the corruption in this judicial system.”
The police officers who say they have been harmed by the corrupt system describe themselves as honest and decent, and said they did not take part in the widespread vice and corruption—they were instead framed and persecuted, they say. They spoke of being set up by crooked officials who, out of revenge, conspired with the courts to concoct false evidence and get a guilty verdict.
Representatives of the group held their first national press conference in December 2012. He Zuhua attended the conference, and said at the time, “There is not much hope in following legal routes. That path hasn’t worked for years. So we decided to petition to the upper levels of government. Our status is relatively special. We were staff members inside the judicial system, but now we have become targets of ‘maintaining stability.’ Now, we are no different from ordinary petitioners; we too have become victims of judicial corruption.”
According to a report from “Human Rights Campaign in China”, a grass-roots organization established in 2008, there have been no successes for wronged police who have petitioned or appealed. Some people in this group are now strictly monitored by local authorities and prevented from attending national rights events.
Read the original Chinese article.
Translation by Jenny Yang. Written in English by Carol Wickenkamp.
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