Chinese beaten for petitioning government

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Chinese beaten for petitioning government

HONG KONG, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Chinese citizens are being attacked, beaten and
intimidated for attempting to petition Beijing authorities over grievances,
a human rights group said Thursday.

Increasing numbers of citizens from the provinces are showing up in Beijing
to petition the central government over injustices including forced
evictions, official corruption, police abuse or violence, and failure of the
court system.

But almost none of the aggrieved are finding justice through the official
petitioning system, said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights
Watch, at a press conference in Hong Kong.

Roth said that provincial officials known as "retrievers" would follow local
residents to Beijing and harass them, often beating or kidnapping them and
forcibly returning them to their hometowns.

He said Beijing police took no action to stop such illegal assaults.

Beijing received 10 million petitions in 2004, but a recent study of 2,000
petitioners found that only three had their problems resolved.

Roth described the petitioning system as wasteful and futile, but said that
a deeply flawed legal system, as well as people's desire for justice and a
sense of dignity, drove them to continue submitting petitions.

Human Rights Watch released an 87-page report detailing the cases of 49
petitioners whose cases the group had investigated.

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