An American woman, Julie Harms, has gotten some attention recently for her attempts to use China’s petitioning system to seek justice for her fiancé, a Chinese man from Anhui province. (Here’s another article on the case, here’s a story in Chinese from 南部周刊, and here’s a translation of the 南部周刊 story into English). He was apparently arrested following a family dispute, and she claims that the family filing the charges have used their connections to convince the police to treat his case more harshly than the law dictates.
From the details in the articles, it’s unclear if the fiancé really is completely innocent — apparently he went back to his home village with five friends to “resolve” the dispute, got into a fight that left him hospitalized, the man who had beaten him was fined and sent to jail, that man’s family then filed a counter-charge for “invasion of private property”, and the fiancé has been in jail since, waiting for his trial. But regardless of the details of the case, he should have the right to a fair and speedy trial, which is what Harms is now trying to ensure that he gets.
The petitioning system has a long history in China, and allows citizens to file a petition to higher authorities if they believe they have been treated unfairly by local courts or local government. Hundreds of thousands of petitioners travel to Beijing every year, and are only very rarely successful in having their complaints addressed. In some cases, provincial police who go to the capital to stop petitioners in order to avoid embarrassment for provincial officials resort to extreme measures to stop people from filing their petitions, including locking petitioners up in makeshift “black jails” that operate in a legal gray zone (story in Chinese here).
However, it’s extremely unusual for foreigners to make use of the petitioning system. According to the articles on the case, Harms is a Harvard graduate who majored in East Asian Studies, has lived in China for a long time, and speaks very good Chinese. Her persistence and determination to have the case resolved according to the law is admirable — even though it’s unclear if, as a foreigner, her involvement and the publicity it has brought has helped or made things worse. I wonder if she’s chosen to take the route of filing a petition rather than, for example, paying a bribe (as one article claimed local officials had requested) in order to do her small part in reducing corruption and strengthening rule of law. When her case is (hopefully) resolved, she will have gained a unique perspective on how the petitioning system works. If (or when) she writes a book about her experiences, it will definitely be on my amazon.com shopping list.