Yesterday was, of course, International Human Rights Day, according to the UN General Assembly. You'd think that with their recent appointment to the UN Human Rights Council, China would've at least started to pull their punches when it come to be dishing out beatings to the poor folks that trek to Beijing to file petitions against corrupt officials, and other grievances they might have. Not so, according to a retired army officer, Gao Hongyi, who went to Beijing's UN offices.
"After I got there, the place was packed with people and large numbers of police," Henan petitioner Shi Yuhong told RFA's Cantonese Service. "We were all put onto buses and taken to the holding centers," he said. "I was put on the 47th bus [to Jiujingzhuang detention center]," he said.
So everything's going well in that department, then. Fearful that Chinese people would criticise the Chinese stance on human rights, the authorities went even further, making sure that no one at the train stations wouldn't get a chance to file their petitions, or make their opinions heard on what was supposed to be a day of building awareness about human rights violations.
They detained a few more people near the southern railway station in Beijing," said a petitioner surnamed Liu from the northeastern province of Jilin. "A lot of people are planning to head up to the UN at Liangmaqiao and the new premises of China Central Television to call for better human rights," Liu said.
"I saw a lot of police and their vehicles by the southern railway station," he added. "They treat petitioners as the enemy."
All of this is, of course, par for the course, when it comes to dealing with complaints made by the little people in China, it doesn't say much for a government which claims to have fought a revolution in the name of the rural poor. Over the past year, censorship and suppression of protestors have increased, ranging from high profile arrests of troublemakers on Weibo to the quiet detentions of activists placed under house arrest. Treatment of minorities in places like Xinjiang have gone from bad to worse, with arbitrary executions taking place without due process or supervision.
China treads a fine line between presenting itself as a modern, rising economy and superpower, but the actual mechanics underneath the shock and awe PR haven't changed since tanks were ordered to clear Tiananmen Square. Despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, they just can't get away from the thuggish tactics that haven't worked in the past, and continue to blight China's future.
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