A few years ago, James and I went down to the streets surrounding the petitions office in Beijing. We found dozens of desperate people who had come on long gruelling journeys to the capital to plead with the authorities to listen to their tales of injustice. They could get noone to listen to them in their home towns – very often those who had abused them were local officials – and they believed that in Beijing they might find the ear of a sympathetic leader. They soon became disillusioned – I cannot remember ever hearing of someone who had a wrong righted on the basis of a petition – and on the morning that we were there, we had papers pressed upon us by petitioners, page after page of handwritten documentation relating instances of corruption and abuse and violence, in the hope that we might be able to help them through our reporting. We wrote about our experiences then. More recently, Channel 4 came and reported on the petitions office today, specifically on the cases of those who've had their property destroyed by developers. Here's the link:
http://www.veoh.com/videos
/v1357069DKZqmaty (Broadcasted by TV Program by Channel 4, UK on Oct.19, 2007)
Click here to see the TV program