Real concern for petitioners

The seven petitioners who drank pesticide in front of a newspaper compound in Beijing two weeks ago to bring attention on their grievances have been detained, which shows the difficulty of cracking the hard nut of shangfang, or visiting a higher level or even the central government to try and get one's grievances addressed.

In another recent case, a woman in her late 70s was detained for eight days for disrupting public order at the office of a local public security department in Central China's Henan province. The woman was reported to have shouted at the top of her lungs: "I want to see director of the bureau."

The seven who tried to attract the media's attention at the risk of their lives were reportedly complaining that they were not being paid enough compensation for their houses, which were being demolished. They said that local public security department placed them under house arrest and forced them to sign an agreement not to lodge petitions to the higher-level government.

In April this year, the State Bureau for Letters and Calls released a document stipulating that visits from petitioners to a petition-handling department above their immediate higher level will not be received. This policy is meant to pressure local governments into doing a better job in addressing local residents' grievances.

However, this makes it difficult for petitioners who feel they have not been fairly treated to make direct appeals to the central government.

For the seven petitioners from Sihong county of East China's Jiangsu province, their attempt to create a sensation by drinking pesticide may set a bad precedent if the national attention they have obtained helps their cause, as some may follow suit.

But if that was the only way they could think of to get their grievances addressed, do we have any reason to blame them for resorting to such an extreme option?

The local government leaders have reportedly been given disciplinary punishments for their roles in the incident.

What the seven pesticide drinkers and the old lady did points to the lack of a mechanism to measure how well a local government is addressing local residents' grievances.

There are indeed some petitioners who pester governments hoping for their unreasonable demands to be met. However, that does not justify the mindset of some local government officials that the majority of petitioners are troublemakers and should thus be treated as troublemakers.