Petition

http://chinafocus.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ZhaoLiang.300_0_11.jpg

In the documentary, “Petition,” that we watched in class, corruption within the communist party’s judicial system was illustrated through following the lives of various Chinese citizens petitioning the government in the period before the Olympic Games.

There is a common misconception that Chinese citizens cannot protest the government; the documentary on the other hand showed how there is a route people can take to petition their rights that they feel have been violated. While there is technically a path citizens can take to challenge the rulings of their local village or town’s courts and sue, the majority of these people are actually punished severely for doing such. Those who go to the petition office and start to defend their case to the employees there are more than often dragged away to detention centers and beaten up horribly.

Each time a person was asked what happened to them in regards to the status of their petition the way they described what brought them to the petitioning office was very much factual and they rarely referenced the CCP directly; they would only use the terms “they” or “them.” For example, one man was petitioning his village’s ruling when officials from his town were damaging his tractor, ruining his agricultural fields, and thus his livelihood. The man made an effort to sue the men who did this to him, but believes that the courts fabricated documents and turned the case over. He did not bluntly say that the CCP was the source of the corruption in his village’s courts, but alluded to the fact that the government (which is essentially the communist party) was behind his overturned attempt to sue.

http://sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Petition-still-1.jpg

Many of the people who go to contest their court rulings and clear their name end up in places called “petitioners villages.” Groups of petitioners live together on the streets, waiting to go to the office every morning to try and have their appeal heard again, risking the potential of being assaulted. Oftentimes, the local governments would hire people to threaten the petitioners to get them to leave the village and away from the petition offices. One of the more extreme actions occurred when they destroyed and burned a petitioners village to make way for a facility for the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Furthermore, towards the end of the documentary, there was a group of people who were discussing the CCP and overall dictatorial government China is operating under. It was interesting to me hearing a group speak so candidly about how they hated how their government was being run by communists and that they wanted democracy.