Unofficial Chinese Spring Festival Gala Muzzled

Every year to mark the Chinese New Year, China Central Television, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, broadcasts its “Spring Festival Gala,” an evening variety show that goes into hundreds of millions of television sets across the country. And for the last three years the Party has also suppressed a bare-bones competitor: the “Petitioners’ Spring Festival Gala.”

A petitioner is a member of the disenfranchised Chinese underclass that appeals to the regime to redress grievances that have not been resolved through the legal system—though very few of the claims are ever dealt with.

The Third Petitioners Spring Festival Gala was held in Beijing again this year on Jan. 20, and the videos uploaded in chunks to Chinese dissident websites and Youtube (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4). 

Over 40 petitioners participated in the production this year. Some explained in the videos that they were not enjoying the Chinese New Year with their families because their houses had been destroyed by forced demolition teams.

The lyrics to one of their songs went: “You’re looking for the Party, I’m also looking for the Party, but now we are wandering on the street. Home has been destroyed already, so I can only go back home in my dreams. I cannot face my village. Party, ruling Party, why do you cheat me to become a petitioner? Aren’t you afraid of an ignoble end?”

Petitioners attempting to hold a live event as part of the subversive Spring Festival Gala at Beijing’s South Station on Jan. 20 only managed to get in a few minutes of singing before police arrived and broke up the Party.

On Jan. 21 at another makeshift performance in Shanghai, petitioners also only performed for a short time—including an attempt to send a greeting to Premier Wen Jiabao—before their party was broken up and they were arrested and sent back to their home provinces. An event was also held in Hubei.

In other places police arrived just as their party was winding down—this made them nervous, but in several cases no arrests were made.

According to RFA, a petitioner from Liaoning Province, Jiang Jiawen, was sentenced to a labor camp after he participated in the petitioners’ Spring Festival event last year.

Boxun, an overseas dissident website, also reported that Zhao Zhenjia, another petitioner, was arrested on Jan. 22 after trying to rescue three petitioners from a “black jail” in Beijing.

Black jails are extra-legal detention centers set up by police and other public or private security forces, used to detain petitioners before they are shipped back to their home provinces, or held in custody indefinitely.

chinareports@epochtimes.com