Our colleague Lin Yang writes:
Fifty seven 57 year old Sun Fawu has been spent years attempting to obtain compensation for houses and farmlands lost to the coal mining industry in his village. His efforts to seek redress through China’s arcane petitioning system totally failed to get any compensation for his fellow villagers. Not only that. According to a report in the New Beijing News on December 8th, his efforts were rewarded with being committed to the local Xintai City psychiatric clinic twice.
Sun was not alone. A veteran patient at the clinic, 84 year old Mr. Shi, has been there since 2006. For two years, Shi has kept a record of all the petitioners delivered to the clinic by the government, and according to the story, counted no less than 18. The government, instead of the doctors, issued diagnoses on the petitioners’ mental states. As a doctor reportedly told Sun, “I don’t care if you are sick or not. The government sent you and I shall treat you as a mental patient.”
Apart from Sun, both the government and the clinic claim to be the victim. The assistant to the town governor lamented that the “government has no authority to provide a satisfactory solution to Sun’s problem, yet allowing them to petition at higher levels will no doubt bring trouble to the town.” There is even less the mental clinic can do, “Many ‘patients’ sent here are clearly not sick”, admitted the director of the clinic, “but what can we do? We can’t deny the diagnosis, not to mention these people were delivered by the police.” It’s also not a profitable business. The local government has not been keeping up with the treatment expenses, and the boarding of each patient costs more than 1000 RMB a month.
Detaining pesky petitioners in mental institutes has been a long rumored practice among local governments. On the website of the Xintai City Petitioners Office for example, one article blandly discusses how stubborn petitioners are dealt with. “The police department will take care of some, the mental hospitals will take care of some, and the rest can be left to organized education camps.”
What is astonishing is that the story has finally made its way into the Chinese media. Let’s hope the New Beijing News will be allowed to tell more of the petitioner story without being punished for its daring in reporting this story.