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Chinese Regime Hires Security Company to Snuff out Dissent

Originally published by Epoch Times ,21 Sept 2010

By Matthew Robertson

Petitioners that arrive in Beijing from around China have been through it for years. They are approached by men wearing security badges, bundled into a car, their cell phones and IDs confiscated, and then they wind up in a “black jail.” Days, weeks, or months pass until officials from their hometowns have them escorted back home with the help of a special security officer.

Black jails sound bad, and they are bad. Held there without the knowledge of their families or friends, those detained in them may be beaten, tortured, tied up, raped, etc. Conditions are squalid; food is terrible, toilets foul.

While some are forcefully repatriated to their native provinces, other petitioners may be set free in Beijing. While many never find out where they were detained, some piece together a picture of the locations based on the road signs and their memories. Some of these individuals were recently interviewed by journalists from Caijing, a well-known magazine based in Beijing.

A series of these petitioners’ accounts all pointed to a security company with some prestige and clout in China, the reporters discovered: the Beijing Anyuanding Security and Protective Technical Service Co., Ltd. They reported their findings in a Sept. 13 article titled “Security Company Specially Employed to Intercept Petitioners.”

“Petitioning” refers to a system of seeking redress for grievances outside the court system. Petitioners present their cases to the State Bureau for Letters and Visits (commonly referred to as the Appeals Office, by any name it is ineffectual and largely impotent), first at the local level, before escalating by bringing their petitions to Beijing.

The mass of people swarming into Beijing has been a constant headache for central authorities. And since Party leaders have put such emphasis ontamping down the number of petitioners, it is in the interest of provincial governments to prevent disaffected citizens from their areas making the trip to the capital and adding to the mass of discontent.

Providing Provinces Muscle

Yet the provinces do not have their own police forces stationed in the capital. That’s where the Anyuanding security group comes in.

According to Anyuanding’s website, it was approved by the Beijing Municipal Committee of Development & Reform, the Department of Public Security of Beijing, and the Beijing Security Service General Company to be a subsidiary security-service provider for the latter (which has deep ties to the regime, having handled security for the 2008 Olympic Games).

 In six short years Anyuanding has achieved numerous “glorious accomplishments,” according to its website. In 2007 it was awarded the honor of being one of the “Ten Most Influential Brands” in security services, chosen by 12 organizers including the People’s Daily. In 2008, it was rated an “A Grade” security group by the Beijing Security Service General Company. It officially employs over 3000 security staff.

Through hanging out with dangerous security types and downtrodden, dispossessed petitioners, Caijing reporters have sketched a damaging portrait of the incestuous relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and this private enterprise.

On the afternoon of Aug. 11, journalists at the north square of a train station in west Beijing caught sight of a typical exchange. A member of the “special forces” personnel was standing on the side of the road; a car pulled up and dropped him a bundle of cash; soon after a petitioner was taken to the railway platform, where a number of Guizhou officials were waiting to receive him and whisk the man home.

Typically for corrupt activities in China, the business relationship between Anyuanding and the provincial governments and Public Security Bureaus is not formally settled. Contracts aren’t signed, and there was no official handover of the work of interception and detainment. Such activities are illegal to begin with; so instead the system rests on a series of verbal agreements, sometimes on the actions of individual security personnel, and always the pursuit of profit.

The dirty deeds that Anyuanding does for local governments do not come dirt cheap, either.

In 2007 the company’s gross income was only 8.6 million yuan (approximately US$1.3 million), but by 2008 its annual report was showing revenue as high as 21 million yuan (approximately US$3.1 million)—the change came from picking up the business coming in the illegal interception work, Caijing reported.

Dynamics of Authoritarianism

Petitioners and interceptors have played a more serious and violent version of Tom and Jerry for years, soon after petitioning to Beijing began, as each party has found every which way to outwit the other.

Petitioners dress in disguise and try to avoid the gaze of interceptors, while interceptors sit in wait for petitioners, trying to corner them with overwhelming manpower. Security forces may sometimes also count on ad-hoc helpers, “acting interceptors,” in remote locations.

The Anyuanding operation is representative of the dynamics of authoritarianism in modern China, as capitalist principles—such as linking performance in interception with personal bonuses—are wedded to state goals of suppressing the voice of the populace.

On Aug. 13 a Caijing reporter made contact with “special team” personnel Zhang. When asked how much he received each day for holding disobedient petitioners, he said “For the first day 300 yuan [about US$45], after that 200 yuan [about US$30] every day.”

 Former Anyuanding employees interviewed by Caijing partially explain the benefit system: when new petitioners arrive at a detention site, their home provinces and the person who intercepted them are noted. The details are recorded and linked to bonuses.

Some security personnel even act like salesmen: One petitioner recalls being handed the business card from a “base chief,” who asked her to “bring some more petitioners” for them.

Petitioners may also be passed around between security cells like chattel if they get sick. Zhang: “We have nurses here, doctors, so we can handle small illnesses. Big illnesses, you take care of that.”

The reporters write how Zhang boasts of his government connections the next time they call him: “I’m busy right now, on the street arresting people. If we didn’t have powerful connections do you think we would dare to be on the streets of Beijing, arresting people?”

And since the model has been such a success in Beijing, Anyuanding has plans to open up shop in Shanghai, Chengdu, and then further afield.

Article Deleted

As yet it is unclear what repercussions the report will have, since the article was deleted from the Caijing website soon after it was published, and major web portals were also scrubbed clean of references to the piece.

The account of arrested petitioners and black jails is likely not the reason the article was removed. Such details have been divulged before, even in the Party’s mouthpiece publications.

A more likely explanation is that the article revealed that it was not only the security forces of the state that have been illegally arresting and detaining Chinese citizens, but private contractors acting above the law.

The Epoch Times contacted Anyuanding, but the operator professed no knowledge of either the Caijing piece or the interception work: “We’re just a security company,” the man said.

Some petitioners reported to the police after they were set free, but Anyuanding’s business continued as usual.

Under such conditions, abuses in custody have thrived. Anyuanding personnel have no incentive to accord petitioners with even basic respect. “If you don’t do as I say, we can beat you without making you look injured,” one petitioner recalls being told, according to Caijing.

Reports of Anyuanding’s violent treatment of petitioners have circulated before.

A letter published by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an NGO, originally written by Chongqing petitioners, says that children as young as 10 and old people aged 82, along with disabled individuals, were all locked in a room after having all their personal property confiscated.

 

Boxun.net, a website that focuses on human rights in China, says “Anyuanding specially prepared truncheons, cords, steel needles, handcuffs, shackles, high-voltage electric batons, leather whips, drugs and other instruments of torture, and set up a kind of ‘torture chamber’ for special force personal to deal with ‘unruly citizens who alienate themselves from the government.’”

This language may be particularly haunting to older petitioners: It is a variation on a slogan that was commonly used during the Cultural Revolution.

Jane Lin contributed to the research.

 

 http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/43020/99999999/1/1/