THE WORLD - Beijing prepares to evict justice-seekers - 'Petitioners' village' is to be cleared to make way for a new road. Some see the Olympics as a secondary motive.
BEIJING — Residents of Beijing's "petitioners' village," an area of cheap hotels and makeshift houses where the poor and downtrodden gather in search of justice, are bracing for the bulldozers.
Destruction of neighborhoods and forced relocation are common in the Chinese capital as traditional neighborhoods are rapidly torn apart by well-connected developers erecting gleaming towers. But this area has more political significance than your average neighborhood.
For several generations, it has been a repository of the pain and frustration felt by those who come to Beijing to appeal to national authorities to right perceived wrongs. Large white notices posted in recent days warn residents of the Fengtai district to vacate the area by noon Wednesday to make way for a new road and overpass complex leading to the nearby Southern Railway Station.
The plans have been in the works for a while. But some see secondary motives in the timing, including a desire to scatter the community of "troublemakers" in advance of next month's Communist Party Congress and to remove an eyesore before the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The petitioners' village is an area of several square blocks wedged behind a wholesale shoe emporium just south of Beijing's second ring road. Against a wall, a man sells photocopies of various laws for 24 cents apiece near graffiti reading, "Zero percent of petitioners get justice, but righteousness still spurs us on."
Zheng Daohong, 65, of Anhui province, has lived in the village on and off for eight years. Until recently, he paid the equivalent of 60 cents a night to sleep in a 30-foot-square room with 19 people and one electric fan.
Zheng has little money and, like many of the estimated 3,000 petitioners living in the village at any given time, a dog-eared pile of papers he carries from one government office to the next.
He wants to find out what happened to his son, who disappeared shortly after he left home eight years ago to seek his fortune in Shanghai. Zheng suspects he ran afoul of government officials there.
A villager from their hometown held in a Shanghai detention center at the time reported seeing his son. As soon as Zheng heard this, he rushed to Shanghai, only to be told that his son had been sent to another facility, where the trail went cold.
- The Big Picture on China Jun 03, 1999
- Beijing Agrees to Legal Reform Sought by U.N. Sep 01, 2005
- N. Korean Threat Different for China Oct 13, 2006
