Hundreds detained in China before new rules in effect

More than 800 people trying to petition the Chinese government over losing their homes and other complaints have been detained in recent weeks, a human rights group said yesterday.

The detentions came in advance of a law that takes effect tomorrow and bars officials from impeding petitioners, the New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) said. It said local authorities might have been trying to block grievances before the new restrictions take effect.

Hundreds of people in Beijing, Shanghai and in China's northeast were detained and beaten in a "nationwide crackdown on petitioners," HRIC said in a written statement. It didn't give a total for the number of people picked up, but said a detention center in Beijing held 600 people at one point, while more than 200 people were detained in another incident.

Chinese law gives the public the right to submit petitions to the government, often complaints of corruption, police misconduct and other abuses. Courts handled more than 4 million such complaints last year, an increase of 24 percent from 2003. But local authorities often are accused of harassing petitioners to keep them from bringing grievances to Beijing.

"There is no excuse for detaining people engaged in lawful and constitutionally protected behavior," HRIC president Liu Qing (劉青) said in the statement.

"Chinese officials have acknowledged that upwards of 80 percent of all petitions pose valid complaints," Liu said. "The government should address these complaints rather than adding to the injustice these people have already suffered," he said.

The latest detentions include several dozen people who were stopped in Beijing on Wednesday while trying to file a protest over the loss of their homes for real estate development. They were put aboard a train back to Shanghai.

In another incident, a group of more than 200 petitioners from Shanghai were detained last Sunday after they boarded a Beijing-bound train, the report said. Three people were beaten and one was injured badly enough to require hospital treatment. The petitioners included people complaining about Zhou Zhengyi (周正毅), a Shanghai developer who is accused of reneging on promises to provide new homes to people who were evicted to make way for one of his projects.