The phrase, "to be disappeared", is used by Chinese to describe someone who is forced to disappear by the authorities, often to a jail. A Jiangxi woman this month declared that she was running for the People's Congress. After a few attempted campaign rallies that were disrupted by police, she has apparently been disappeared. Her friends are circulating the news on the web and asking for help.
As I was composing this diary, news came that Ping Liu was released by police 1:30 this am and has returned to her home. Her fight continues......
Update: From her own blog entry today, she says that her apartment was ransacked by police. Electricity has been cut from her apartment. And police is now stationed at the stairway outside her apartment 24/7. She says that "she is being safed (by police)" now.
Ping Liu was a worker in a state-owned enterprise in Xinyu City, Jiangxi Province, until two years ago, when she became a victim of the "forced internal retirement", which is the way for state-owned businesses to quickly trim their staff and become competitive. Although the central government has specific policies on when and how "internal retirement" can happen, because of the lack of a functioning trade union, "internal retirement" has become an easy way for companies to depress salary and arbitrarily fire workers.
After being forced into retirement, she tried to organize coworkers who were also forced to retire to try to present their case to government agencies and seek redress. For two years their case went nowhere.
This year Ping Liu decided to run for People's Congress in order to address the wider issue of economic injustice in the society. Her platform is basically workers' right and transparency in corporate governance. As soon as she declared her independent candidacy, she started to be harassed by police. She tried to hold a few campaign rallies but each time police used force to disperse the crowd.
This picture shows Ping Liu in front of a police van and holding a hand-written sign which says "Ping Liu, running for congress."
She collected the number of signatures required by law in order to get on the ballot. Despite that, when the official ballot appeared, her name was not on it. None of the other independent candidates got on the ballot either.
Her friends started to spread the words on the internet in order to help her candidacy. Within hours of her microblog (Chinese version of twitter) entry, it was retweeted by thousands.
Yesterday her friend Jianrong Yu twitted that he had not heard from Ping Liu for over ten hours. They had arranged that if she would be out of contact for that long then something had definitely happened, and he was to file a missing person report. His announcement on the microblog that Ping Liu was disappeared was retweeted by nearly 50,000 people, and became the focus of a whole nation - despite a complete blackout by the media.
Finally, the authorities gave in and released her. Ping Liu returned home at 1:30 this am (May 13th). A higher-up in the public security system was reported to say that Ping Liu's "appointment" with the police was political in nature.