ABC: China's Dispossessed Time Protests In Last Resort,

B E I J I N G, March 15 -

Bringing tales of lives wrecked, official abuse and nest eggs lost, Chinese flock to Beijing during the brief annual legislative session, hoping that, somehow, the lawmakers will help them. Many travel from across the country, hoping that the communist government that says it exists to "serve the people" will respond.

But the leaders who talk of bringing rule by law to a country so long ruled by personalities are kept well-insulated from aggrieved citizens during their two-week stay in Beijing. Soldiers cordon off Tiananmen Square, the wide expanse beside the Great Hall of the People, where the 3,000 lawmakers meet. They are herded through town on buses that sweep down boulevards cleared by legions of traffic police. Protesters are quickly subdued and hustled away, often put on trains back home.

All this, for the government that Premier Zhu Rongji exhorted at the session's start to "ensure government work truly reflects the people's wishes and interests." They came anyway disgruntled stockholders, peasant women, members of the banned Falun Gong meditation movement, some of whom travelled from as far as Australia. Others sent letters or faxes.

One elderly lady sat down on the pavement near the Great Hall of the People, clutching pamphlets and refusing police entreaties to leave. Police also hauled away Falun Gong members, including several foreigners who attempted to protest against the government's crackdown by holding up yellow banners across the road from the Great Hall.

The practice of "shangfang," or petitioning Beijing officialdom to intervene in local disputes, dates to imperial times. The Petition Handling Office of the Supreme Court says it handled 152,557 letters and appeals last year. After years of suppression following the 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Chinese are growing bolder about taking their grievances into the streets, and the authorities more relaxed about handling violations of bans on such unauthorized displays except those by Falun Gong members.

Police have not intervened in a peaceful protest by up to 50,000 laid-off workers who have surrounded offices in Daqing, China's largest oil field, daily since March 1 to protest cuts in severance benefits. Most protesters are more cautious, though. A group of several hundred middle-class home owners staged a lively protest early this month in their apartment compound. They hoped to force a developer in Wangjing New City, an upscale suburb in northern Beijing, to give up plans to build a 33-story building instead of the three-story building originally promised. They didn't venture outside the gate to the compound. A dozen men angered by the closing of an electronic stock exchange trading system that has cost many Chinese their life savings gathered quietly outside the gates of the China Securities Regulatory Commission earlier this week.

"This money is the result of our blood and sweat," said a man from Chengdu, in distant Sichuan province. The man, who gave only his surname, Wang, said he lost about 24,000 when regulators closed down the trading networks, similar to the Nasdaq, in 1999. A securities official made a reporter leave, saying protests during the legislative session were very sensitive. But when appeals to officialdom fail, some try the media.

Li Yuying, a 76-year-old grandmother in Nanchong, another Sichuan city, says she wrote to the courts, to the legislature, to top officials, to no avail. In a letter faxed to The Associated Press, Li recounted miseries that began in 1994 when her home was razed, like millions of others in fast-changing China, to make way for real-estate development.Crippled by injuries suffered when she was run over by a policeman while scavenging through garbage outside a restaurant a year and a half ago, Li has been trying to collect $3,000 in court-ordered compensation. "Dear heavens, please help this old grandma and her children," Li said in her letter. A local court official confirmed the case and said a final verdict was expected soon.

Villagers in Yuntang, in the southern province of Jiangxi, demanded punishment for police who they say attacked them during a pre-dawn raid last April 15, shooting to death at least two unarmed farmers. The villagers, whose farms were ruined in devastating 1998 floods, had refused to pay a farm tax. Asked about the dispute during a news conference, a senior Jiangxi lawmaker acknowledged the existence of the tax dispute but claimed the problem had been resolved.

"Some farmers resorted to drastic measures due to the excessive burden on them," said Huang Zhiquan, Communist Party vice secretary for Jiangxi province. "We have taken measures to improve the methods used by our officials. This problem no longer exists."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20020315_261.html