Crying out for justice in
Beijing By Florence Chan
HONG KONG - It has become almost a festive ritual that
during every week-long National Day holiday, beginning
on October 1, thousands of self-proclaimed victims
of injustice, largely farmers whose land was
appropriated, flood into Beijing from all over China. There they
pour out their grievances to the State Letters and
Complaints Bureau (SLCB), an organ under the State Council
or cabinet officially lending its ears to public
pleas from those who otherwise would be unheard and
cannot afford legal redress or do not trust the courts.
Around this time, the Qiaoyuan Hotel, located in the
bureau's neighborhood, usually registers many guilty-looking and
uncomfortable local officials who make for the bureau,
attempting to head off complainants from their areas.
Letters and Complaints Bureaus (LCBs), either in
Beijing or in locations throughout China, are set up to
receive reports of dissatisfaction from the masses.
According to a large-scale official survey directed by
celebrated rural problems scholar Dr Yu Jianrong,
however, only 0.2% of complainants have had their
problems resolved after appealing to an LCB. Moreover,
90.5% wanted to inform the central government of their
plights and 88.5% pleaded for pressure on local
authorities. The survey also showed that most
capital-bound petitioners distrust the judicial system,
as some 63% of the interviewees had lodged a legal
action only to be dismissed or ruled against.
Therefore, cornered victims pin their last hope
of redressing injustice on the State Letters and
Complaints Bureau. Unfortunately, their judgments are
misplaced, because the savior in victims' eyes is only a
petition receiver, who lacks the added power to tackle
the wide variety of problems generating complaints.
Oriental Outlook, an official weekly journal, quoted a
deputy director of the SLCB as saying that LCBs
currently were cramped in jurisdiction, and no
legislation had been enacted to extend their power.
This explains the difficulty LCBs face in
helping victims out of misery. "In most cases, we have
to send official missives to local-level authorities
like justice departments, but they seldom reply. For
instance, we mailed some 180 letters between January and
November of 2003, but only got 30 replies," an SLCB
clerk told Oriental Outlook, speaking on condition of
anonymity. Besides, LCBs seem terribly undermanned
nationwide. Even the SLCB staff falls short of 40, which
makes on-the-spot supervision of local authorities
impossible.
Pursuant to its own statistics, SLCB
witnessed a 14% increase in the number of complainants
it saw in 2003; figures at provincial-level LCBs were up
by 0.1% and city-level, up by 0.3%, while statistics at
the county-level were down by 2.4%. Parallel departments
in the central government recorded an average 46% surge
in the total number of petitioners they received in
2003, while local departments reported slimmer growth or
even slight decreases. These figures reveal that victims
must appeal to higher authorities each time they have a
complaint, and finally turn to Beijing in hopes of
grabbing a shred of attention or justice, since local
LCBs can do little about their problems.
The
foregoing statistics also indicate that each
Beijing-bound petitioner has to visit six or more
departments under the central government, such as the
SLCB, the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress (equivalent to parliament), the Supreme
People's Court, the Central Committee for Discipline
Inspection, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme
People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Land and
Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, and so on. If
their efforts do not pay off - and they often do not -
skepticism will begin mounting over the authority of the
central government.
Not until very recently did
Beijing consider reforming the complaint-collecting
mechanism by order of President Hu Jintao, who states
that the officials should go to the populace instead of
the other way around, petitioners entreating the
officials. Supposing the problems could be resolved by
the local authorities concerned, people would save
themselves a troublesome journey to Beijing.
The
fourth plenary session of the 16th Chinese Communist
Party National Congress held on September 19 passed a
resolution that pledged to enhance the
petition-receiving mechanism and properly and promptly
handle the problems presented by means of policy, law,
economic and executive levers, education, negotiation,
and reconciliation. Further, the resolution determined
that the public should be persuaded to express and
pursue its concerns in a rational, legal manner.
As mentioned earlier, petitioners tend to
misplace their hopes with the SLCB which, nevertheless,
has powers too limited to sort out their grievances. At
this point, the moderate President Hu has called for the
establishment of a regular joint conference among some
28 concerned departments under the State Council,
including the SLCB, to cope with problems that are
widespread and of grave magnitude, such as the
appropriation of farmers land without due process.
The joint conference will follow the latest
development of the salient problems, offer suggestions
and possible solutions, mobilize authorities concerned
to address the discussed problems, and ensure through
supervision that the policies created are put into
force. Some experts believe that reform has already
begun, changing ineffective mono-department
problem-hearing into multi-department problem-solving.
However, some experts say multi-department
cooperation does not necessarily lead to mutual
supervision as expected, but instead, maladministration
of public office, considering that corruption has
permeated Chinese officialdom and become the rallying
point of numerous invisible interest groups. On the
other hand, if Beijing falls back on the single
department resort and grants more power to the LCBs,
certain principal officials inside the government also
will face the temptation of bribery that jeopardizes
impartiality, discipline and justice.
Recently,
the pundits organized by the State Council to revise the
Ordinance on Letters and Complaints have debriefed Dr Yu
Jianrong on his proposal to postpone the passage of the
revised ordinance. In his report, Yu recommended a
step-by-step reform in administrative, law-enacting and
policymaking perspectives, with the ultimate goal of
disbanding the LCBs and referring petitioners to the
People's National Congress at all levels.
According to Yu, the filed complaints mostly
concern social stability and security, covering illegal
land expropriation, electoral malpractices, official
corruption, illicit fees and charges, revenge against
petitioners, and so on. Yet to their disappointment, the
LCBs are not empowered enough to rectify these problems
that theoretically should have been presented to
judicial authorities. "Limited power is a drawback of
our letters and complaints bureaus," conceded Zhang
Pengfa, head of the SLCB research office.
"In a
sense, the petition-hearing system is based on the
notion of 'the rule of men' that traditionally dominates
the Chinese society," Yu asserted. "As a negative
outcome, it dissolves the majesty of justice
authorities." That is because most complainants view the
LCBs as a privileged channel through which to make their
voices heard and noticed, and they take for granted
their ability to turn to LCBs if they are disappointed
by local authorities. Nevertheless, the LCBs were set up
only to collect advice in the first place.
Now,
the nationwide consensus is that the current
petition-hearing system should be renovated, but which
way the reform should go is still a focus of
controversy. Dissenting from Yu's motion to dismiss the
LCBs, SLCB chief researcher Zhang Pengfa insists that
the power of letters and complaints bureaus must be
strengthened. This concept is echoed by well-known
scholar Fu Guoyong, who pointed out that the existing
Ordinance on Letters and Complaints did not hold
legislative and judicial establishments liable in the
petition-receiving system. Fu suggested that legislation
regarding complaints be strengthened and even a tribunal
for petitions be founded.
In addition, a great
number of complainants find the possibility of
disbanding the LCBs worrying. Before they turned to
LCBs, many of them had reached out for assistance to the
justice authorities, but to no avail. Since the general
public is losing faith in judicial organs, dismissing
letters and complaints bureaus will be no different from
shutting the only avenue open to outcries and the only
ear, aside from the court system, against grievances.
According to some political scientists,
there are only slogans advocating democracy in China but
no environment to nurture and enforce it, which is the
crux of the problem. Clause 3 of the Ordinance on Letters
and Complaints stipulates that administrative
departments at all levels must listen to public
opinions, suggestions and requirements, subject
themselves to public supervision and serve the people.
But owing to a rigid press gag imposed by Beijing, open
and transparent supervision proves to be lame and
maimed, so that the well-designed ordinance remains more
talk than action.
As there are no recent signals
that the tide of Beijing-bound petitioners will be on
the ebb soon, Beijing has found it increasingly
imperative to revolutionize the complaint-receiving
mechanism. Yet between two minds about whether to
expand or weaken the power of the LCBs, Beijing has also
found it an agonizing choice to make.
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2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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