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A Chinese tourist who mistaken for a petitioner was badly beaten up. He was dragged from his Beijing hotel room, shoved into a van—and later found unconscious on a road in his home province of Henan. Rights activists say it is common for petitioners to be kidnapped and beaten up in the Mainland.
A Chinese tourist mistaken for a petitioner was abducted and brutally beaten up. Zhao Zhipei was dragged from his Beijing hotel room and shoved into a van on September 15th by a dozen unidentified men.
Zhao was found the next day lying unconscious on a road in Luoyang City, Henan Province.
BBC News reported that Zhao was sharing a hotel room with three other men from Henan who were genuine petitioners.
Chinese state media said the Luoyang Letters and Calls bureau hired employees of a Beijing security firm to assault the man. Six local officials have been punished for the incident.
Zhao's case was reported because he was mistaken for a petitioner. Otherwise, the frequent occurrence of harassment and abduction of petitioners is considered a 'standard practice.'
Every year, millions of Chinese citizens petition local Chinese regime offices.
[Sarah Cook, Freedom House Asia Research Analyst]:
"There're some Chinese official statistics back in 2007 that indicated that they were something like 12.7 million petitioners in 2007. So, this is not a small phenomenon."
Many are assaulted and kidnapped.
[Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst, Freedom House]:
"There was a survey done by the Chinese Academy of Social Science. This was back in 2007, that 71 percent of the petitioners that they interviewed said they'd been beaten, and 64 percent said they'd been detained at some point during the petitioning process."
Cook explains petitions are linked with local officials' promotion.
