Police harassment against bi-annual conference of Beijing Aizhixing Institute
Police harassment against bi-annual conference of Beijing Aizhixing Institute
Wan Yanhai
In the morning of Feb 14, 2009, when we were having our first 2009 bi-annual working meeting with about 50 participants within our small meeting room in Beijing, 2 uniformed police came. Policemen first investigated my ID and then our institute registration documents. I asked why they came. One policeman said that they got a report that there were an illegal gathering here. I asked what an illegal gathering mean. Police said that illegal gathering mean that meeting with more than 50 people but without registered in the police department. I said that maybe you could go and see whether we had 50 people or not. Police said that more than 30 people without informing police department.
Police left and then came back again. 2 policemen started to investigate ID of all participants. There were some arguments but in general it was a peaceful process. Police stopped investigation when they got a phone call.
We called police department and asked for the reason of investigation, and got no answer.
According to China’s law, illegal gathering only refers to public gathering for political issues. And we only need to report if there are more than 200 participants if we have meetings inside rooms. And we had our meeting in our own office and we had such meetings all the times.
Post a comment