I got a call from Beijing, Red China earlier this week from a friend who lives there. He told me he saw a growing willingness of the people from the outer cities to challenge the authorities. He also saw a growing willingness in the authorities to repress such people.

The cops, he said, had it down to an art. He was in downtown Beijing on other business this month when he happened upon a large group of protestors, maybe 100 people, holding banners, passing out fliers and demanding justice for their dead killed in a police massacre last year in the area outside Shenzhen.

They had taken their petition to the local authorities and gotten no response. That’s why they trekked up to Beijing to make their case known. They got no audience in Beijing, either. So, desperate, they went to the Xerox place and the Internet cafe, and printed up their fliers stating their case. They wanted justice for their lone sons, their brothers, their fathers, their husbands mowed down by police over land disputes and protests against corruption last year.

Quick, they handed my friend a flier stating their case. My friend took it and all at once, the Beijing cops descended upon them, trying to grab it away. He jumped into his car but the cops grabbed the fliers from him anyway. Then, he came up with the idea of rolling down his window only a crack. The protesters ran up to the window, sliding the fliers in. The cops tried to grab those too but my friend zipped his window up and managed to drive away. But not before he saw the Beijing cops turn their nightsticks against the protestors, beating the heck them brutally and then hauling them off to jail. He does not know what’s since become of them.

My friend says it’s a sign of more to come. With cops this shameless and repressive against peaceful petitioners for justice, there are a whole lot more grievances than when these protests started. My friend thinks there will be much more instability to come. The Beijing cops think their six-minute ballet against them will take care of matters but too many people are starting to see these broad daylight repressions now. Trouble will arise from it, he says.