Beijing ( AsiaNews) - In an
attempt to attract attention to their woes , a group of protesters who had arrived
in Beijing to seek justice after the demolition of their homes drank the
pesticide and are now in danger of dying. According
to an eyewitness, the 12 people poisoned themselves yesterday, December 11,
2013 , near the Qianmnen tower in the heart of the capital. All
the demonstrators are from the capital of Hubei province, Wuhan, where local
authorities have destroyed their homes without any agreement with the owners.
Wang,
40, explains that he and his friends tried to perform a mass suicide : "We
have filed petitions for many years but every time we were picked up , thrown
into secret prisons , beaten and taken home . And no one has ever helped us. We feel hopeless".
As
a further gesture of protest, last month, the group wrote a letter to the Municipal
Petitions Office of Wuhan asking "permission to commit suicide together,
given that after three years of protests we gained nothing."
The
practice of "petitions" , which dates back to the times of the
emperors, has been retained by the Communist Party : everyone who has suffered abuse
and embezzlement by local governments has the right to complain to Beijing. All
attempts are made to stop petitioners : According to the Law on Petitions , in
fact, at the end of year the central government draws up a report and rewards
or punishes those most deserving or contested provinces.
The Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party has committed itself - among various promises - to review the system of petitions . Also because more often than not it is a source of corruption within the government structure : in recent days Xu Jie , deputy director of the State Bureau for Letters and requests has been removed from his post and then arrested. The man is under indictment for "serious violations of discipline" (euphemism used by bureaucrats to indicate the state corruption ) .