>A report released Monday by a Beijing-based newspaper, Xinjingbao (The Beijing News), set up a nationwide barrage of criticism toward a township in the eastern >>Chinese >Shandong >Province. In the report authorities in the city of >>Xintai were accused of using forcible psychiatric treatment to silent petitioners. At least 18 people were believed to have been abducted and detained in mental asylums, with some being administered debilitating drugs when they objected, for fear that they take their complaints to higher authorities or to Beijing. The Beijing News said the grievances petitioners had long been pursuing to address range from police brutality to property disputes, and the victims would be released only when they signed on the agreement vowing to drop their complaints.>
>But the irony may lie in the fact that once they are admitted to mental hospitals and certified immediately afterwards by the psychiatrists as mentally ill, they are alleged insane people. How come would the authorities in question be so ready to accept an agreement signed by people diagnosed with mental disturbance? Or is it actually the local authorities who are insane enough in producing all that absurdity?
>According to the report, because local officials fear embarrassment and are under pressure to show their area is under proper control, they attempt to intercept complainants. Besides, ‘zero petitioning,’ as a hidden yardstick to evaluate administrative capabilities of local governments, also propels local officials to stop the aggrieved residents from petitioning provincial capitals or officials higher up in >>Beijing. ‘It’s a covert way to silence people…There is no accountability or oversight. The person disappears, effectively; and with them, whatever evidence they have compiled against officials,’ said Lu Chao, expert on social studies, pointing to the practice of holding petitioners in mental asylums
>The obviously healthy people were locked up in mental centers and labeled as mentally ill. The practice adopted by local officials to muffle the public opinions and quell the public discontent is in itself inhumane and morbid; on the other hand, realizing that their complaints can hardly get redress in this way, even if taken to officials higher up or aired in Beijing, petitioners persist in cracking the hard nuts through the channel, which may also be seen as abnormal.
>Even from imperial days, Chinese people who suffered injustices tended to petition central authorities for help and have stubbornly taken it the only way out for the justice to be done. The tradition has survived into the modern era but has become quite a subtle issue, which could arouse some compassion, but in the mean time, could also be found repulsive by many others, as petitioning is, after all, not an effective way to settle problems but more of a disruption to social order.
>In the backdrop of building up a harmonious society, the complaining systems in existence must be promptly optimized and the more effective channels must be opened up for citizens to air their grievances. A popular slogan--Local problems must be settled locally-- which goes in some local governments to show off their ability to settle disputes, should not only focus on the end, but more on the means to the end—what exactly did you do to thaw the conflict>？>> > >