China Aid Association
(Xinyu city, Jiangxi Province — Sept 22, 2012) ChinaAid has learned that on Wednesday local time (September 19, 2012), the prominent Christian human rights defenders and independent candidates Sister Liu Ping and Brother Wei Zhongping went to Yushui Branch of Xinyu Public Security Bureau of Jiangxi Province to submit their application for a protest demonstration. There, they were illegally brutally beaten, verbally abused and frisked for 11 hours by the police officers of security brigade of the Public Security branch.
Following is the record of Sister Liu Ping and Brother Wei Zhongping in which they describe in details how they were violently treated inside the security brigade of Yushui Branch of Xinyu Municipal Public Security Bureau:
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Three independent candidates and human rights defenders of Jiangxi province Liu Ping, Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua made an appointment on the morning of September 19, 2012 of going to Yushui Branch of Xinyu Municipal Public Security Bureau to submit the “Application for Demonstration” by which Liu Ping will protest against two courts in Xinyu City and Yushui District that refused to accept, file or reply to the five administrative lawsuits. As Li Sihua had to bring his daughter to see a doctor and then drop her off at the school, so only Liu and Wei went there first and Li would go there later.
However, the unthinkable brutality occurred. Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping arrived at 8:30 at Yushui Public Security Bureau and left at around 19:40 in the evening. They left the police facility with wounds all over their body. In these 11-some hours, the police officers in the branch violated the law when they were supposed to enforce it. They locked up the applicants and beat them up. It’s hard to imagine such a barbarian brutality occurred in a law enforcement agency in a so-called “society under rule of law” in China.
In Xinyu’s “Anti-Japanese Patriotic Demonstrations” on September 16 and September 18, these three independent candidates of Jiangxi found in their photos a large number of plain-cloth police officers and other “stability maintenance” personnel. This fully proves the following two facts:
First of all, it proves the claim that the patriotic demonstration was spontaneous is a lie. Secretary of Committee of Political Science and Law went to the scene to direct the demonstration. DSPS police officers, armed guards and security patrol officers and other “stability maintenance” personnel all went to the streets. Besides, one could see everywhere the mysterious “plain cloth agents.”
Second, the photos taken by the three independent candidates prove another fact: the plain-cloth police officers who again and again illegally detained them and treated them violently appeared in the demonstration. In the photos, after Liu Ping recognized the perpetrator who, during the Two Conferences (the National People’s Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference), put a black hood on her head, escorted her back to Xinyu from Beijing, threw her into an illegal jail and robbed her, she immediately put the photos online and called on people to conduct a search for the physical location and name of the perpetrator.
Wei Zhongping also saw in the photos those hired roughnecks of the government who, during the Two Conferences (the National People’s Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference), threw her into an illegal jail, broke three of her ribs and one transverse bone. While these photos can provide evidence for the future trial of historical crimes, they also increase the risk of these independent candidates. Yesterday, the incident in which Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping were illegally locked up and beaten occurred under such a background.
On the evening of September 18, a police officer surnamed Shu from Tieshan Police Station of Yuanhe Branch of Xinyu Municipal Public Security Bureau tried to “talk” with Liu Ping and his request was rejected as Liu Ping wouldn’t let him in. On the early morning of September 19, the “stability maintenance” people from Liu Ping’s work unit again went to her home and wanted to take her to Xiannu Lake and spend a few days there. In fact, they wanted to place her on house arrest for a few days. Liu Ping said she had to go with Wei Zhongping to submit an application for the demonstration. Then the “stability maintenance” people requested that they go with them in submitting the application and then they go to Xiannu Lake.
At around 8:30 on September 19, Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping, accompanied by the “stability maintenance” people, came to the gate of Yushui Branch of the Public Security Bureau. After Wei Zhongping took a photo of Liu Ping, Liu Ping sent the photo to her micro-blog on QQ, saying that she came to the place to submit an application for demonstration in protest against the courts’ deprivation of the client’s right to lawsuit and that their purpose is to protect the law and the citizens’ right to lawsuit. However, her legal act of taking a photo and sending it on her micro-blog became the excuse of Yushui police in treating her violently.
At this time, the “stability maintenance” people from Wei Zhongping’s work unit heard about the news and hurriedly arrived at Yushui Public Security Branch in an attempt to talk Wei Zhongping out of it. After they got inside the gate of the Public Security Bureau, the police officers closed the gate and said: “None of them shall leave here!” Again, it looked like a situation of late September of last year when Lawyer Wang Cheng from Hangzhou was beaten behind a closed gate. The police mistakenly took the “stability maintenance” people as those who came to apply for the demonstration. They were forced to stay in the lobby and their cell phones were robbed during which they dragged the people. What a scene!
Not long after Liu Ping was “taken inside” from the lobby, Wei Zhongping was also “taken inside.” “Taken inside” is a special phrase used by the police. Those people who have been “taken inside” would shiver at its bloody connotation. While the “stability maintenance” personnel from the work units of respectively Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping were embarrassed by their own kind, they have accidentally witnessed that Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping were “taken inside” by the security brigade just because they applied for demonstration in accordance with law.
The security brigade was remodeled upon a quadrangle courtyard of the former detention center. There is only one entrance/exit into and out of it. The facility is well sealed on all sides. After Liu Ping was “taken inside,” she reiterated again and again that she was there to submit an application for demonstration. As the leaders of her work unit were waiting for her in the lobby, she would like to leave as soon as she submitted the application. However, at 9 o’clock, she was pushed into the interrogation room in the innermost of this police facility. A woman police officer with the police number 050529 wanted her to take off all her clothes. After she searched her body, she wanted Liu Ping’s cell phone. Liu Ping asked why and whether she had a legal basis for doing so.
While they were arguing, and before Liu Ping put on her pants back, Hu Ping, deputy brigade leader with the police number 051110 dashed in and tried to grab her cell phone. Liu Ping wanted him to issue a list of confiscated items and she recorded on her palm Hu Ping’s police numbers as 051110 for Hu Ping, 051247 for He Liang and 050529 for the woman officer. He Liang and the woman officer brutally and rudely wrung both arms of Liu Ping behind her back and beat her. They pried open her palm and erased by force the police numbers. He Liang called Liu Ping an old scoundrel woman and a counter-revolutionary. He also said how can such people as she engage in democracy and how can just a few people like her overthrow the Communist Party.
The two police officers surrounded Liu Ping and beat her there. When Liu Ping struggled, He Liang yelled that Liu Ping was assaulting the police. At this moment, a plain cloth police officer used a DV to videotape Liu Ping. Liu Ping wanted them to go through the legal procedure. They forced Liu Ping to sit there for an interrogation and a written record. Liu Ping wanted him to show her the police certificate. When he asked her a question, Liu Ping would reply: “Please show your police certificate.” At this question, He Liang talked to himself and tried to pretend making the written record. At about 9:20, Hu Ping who had grabbed Liu Ping’s cell phone again broke in and beat and verbally abused Liu Ping: “I respect even murderers, but I can never tolerate such a shameless brat like you. Whenever I see you, I want to beat you up and I’d like to see whether you still dare to come here!”
He Liang took by force Wei Zhongping’s badge with the word “citizen.” When Hu Ping saw that Liu Ping was also wearing a badge with the word “citizen,” he asked Liu Ping: When you were in the demonstration yesterday, did you shout the slogan ‘Long live the Republic of China!’ Did you shout ‘Down with the corruption!’ All you can do is put up your thighs and sell…. You the counter-revolutionary even dare to start an illegal demonstration. You are only good enough to be a chick and sell your…” When Liu Ping said in protest that she wanted to be a citizen, not a pig, the brutal Hu Ping hit her with both his hands and his feet. He hit her on the head, slapped her on the face and stomped on her feet.
For a day there, Liu Ping didn’t have anything to eat or drink and she was so hit that she vomited yellow and bitter fluid. She declared to the two police officers in a feeble voice: “I have a serious cholecystitis and gall-stones. There can be a perforation at any time.” The two police officers said while beating her: “You won’t die as a hospital is right beside us.” They stopped beating only when they were tired. Then, they did a DNA, took a photo, fingerprinting and palm printing, etc. on her so as to build up a database on this “criminal suspect.” Liu Ping asked them on what ground they were doing these, but she was too feeble to resist.
At 19:40, that is, over 11 hours after Liu Ping was “taken inside,” she was thrown out of the gate of the police bureau with her tired and bloody body. Liu Ping’s cell phone was “confiscated” by Hu Ping as a tool of the crime. They did it without going through any procedure. In fact, it was robbery. At the gate of the police bureau, Liu Ping begged the boss who had a melon stand to lend his cell phone so that he could call Li Sihua. When Li Sihua went there, they called 110 for police. Then a police vehicle with the license plate number Jiangxi-K011B arrived with six police officers. Only an assistant police officer with the number X00090 asked Liu Ping several questions while other police officers went into the police bureau. When one of them waved, the rest went into the vehicle and left the scene.
Wei Zhongping came out only a few minutes before Liu Ping. Inside there, he was also frisked and brutally beaten and verbally abused for over 11 hours. Likewise, he didn’t have anything to eat or drink and they didn’t allow him to urinate. Likewise, he was also forced to sign and leave his fingerprint on the written record of interrogation of the “criminal suspect.” Likewise, they also built a database by drawing his DNA sample and his fingerprint. Likewise, they never showed their police certificates or went through any legal procedures for the compulsory measures.
Wei Zhongping said: “We’ve come here to submit our application for the demonstration. There are no facts or evidence that suggest we are criminal suspects. It is you who have committed crimes. You didn’t go through any legal procedures in illegally detaining and beating us. This is a vicious criminal act.” Wei Zhongping’s arguments on the basis of reason brought him a round of brutal beatings. Though he reiterated that he had not fully recovered from a bone fracture, it did not prevent “people’s police” from beating him brutally.
After Li Sihua took his daughter to a doctor and then sent her to school, he couldn’t get hold of Liu Ping or Wei Zhongping. At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, he concluded that something bad must have happened to them. Since they ran for people’s delegates as independent candidates, the three of them have become the targets of high sensitivity and stability maintenance in Xinyu. They are constantly arrested, detained, beaten and robbed. On their part, however, they persist in appealing from the district to municipality to the provincial authorities and to central authorities. They defend their rights step by step in accordance with law and step by step they apply for the openness of information, administrative reconsideration, administrative lawsuit and even establishing criminal cases.
They take up law as a weapon in defending their rights. Their bold civil actions against the authorities who violate the law have cornered some “stability maintenance” officials and made them desperate. This is especially true when the photos they took during the September 16 and September 18 demonstration showed several plain cloth police officers were in the crowd. After their photos were put online and after the netizens searched for their physical locations and identities, this has actually put their personal safety in jeopardy. Therefore, Li Sihua concluded that when Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping went to submit their application for demonstration, they could have “turned themselves into the net.”
The head of the security brigade called Li Sihua to make an appointment at about 4 o’clock so that he would give Li a reply on the application for the demonstration. In order to look for the whereabouts of Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping, Li Sihua had to go there alone. Compared with September 11 when Liu Ping accompanied him to submit the application for the demonstration, he felt there was a special tension in the air. After receiving special examinations and questionings, he was taken into a small room for frisking where they found his cell phone and micro video camera. He was “persuaded” into going back and they asked him not to get entangled in this and make troubles.
Li Sihua insisted that his application for demonstration is legal and strongly demanded that the police issue a written notice in reply. He said: “The reason why I am applying for the demonstration is to protest against the courts for not giving me a reply as the law requires. Besides, you treated your clients in the same way by not giving a reply in writing. So I will likewise protest against you. The reason why I have brought my micro video camera is to get some evidence showing the legal procedure I have gone through.” Yet, no matter how many times Li Sihua said this, he has never got a reply in writing.
Li Sihua was not permitted to be “taken inside.” In this way, he was spared the physical torture, but he couldn’t find the whereabouts of Liu Ping or Wei Zhongping. This made him all the more convinced that Liu and Wei had been under the police’s control. As he was ready to get online to spread this news, he got a call from Liu Ping. On that night, these three independent candidates of Jiangxi got together in the home of a woman surnamed Li who is a human right defender. They looked at each other in tears and they were speechless for the conspiracy and brutality of the police who “locked them up and beat them.” Is it really true that when they pin their hope to the political reforms inside the system to promote the process of democracy and rule of law, it is like asking a tiger for its skin as the Chinese saying goes?
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ChinaAid has been paying close attention to the fact of continuous persecution that the independent candidates Sister Liu Ping, Brother Wei Zhongping and others have suffered in recent years in their defense of human rights in accordance with law. We are shocked and angry at seeing they have been brutally beaten and abused by the police for submitting an application for a protest demonstration. When such a criminal incident of serious violation of the law occurred on the eve of the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, it has fully shown China is far from a society of rule of law. We strongly denounce the brutality committed by the people’s police against the innocent citizens and we call on the central government in China to go with the tide of history and start the political reform in the system in the real sense of the word and build a true civil society under rule of law.
ChinaAid has learned that two Christian human rights lawyers respectively from Beijing and Guangzhou—Xiao Guozhen and Sui Muqing have promised to represent Ms. Liu Ping and they are preparing to take legal actions by suing Xinyu Municipal Government and Xinyu Municipal Public Security Bureau.
Lawyer Xiao Guozhen’s cell phone number: 15210442636. Email address: [email protected]
Lawyer Sui Muqing’s cell phone number: 13711124956 Email address: [email protected]
Liu Ping’s cell phone number: 13879013098
Wei Zhongping’s cell phone number: 13507902465
Li Sihua’s cell phone number: 13320001271
Cell phone number of Hu Ping, deputy brigade leader, the police officer who perpetrated the brutality: 13907903015
Phone number of Security Management Brigade of Yushui Public Security Branch: 0790-6200301
China Aid Contacts
Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director
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Email: [email protected]
Website: www.chinaaid.org
