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.