When the government doesn't help, but harms

When the government doesn't help, but harms

On the afternoon after Peng Gaofeng brought his son, abducted and missing for over two years, back home to his family, Mr. Peng received a visit from the police.  The entourage of Shenzhen Public Security officers strode in to Mr. Peng's dingy Internet cafe with a couple of fruit and gift baskets, tied up in big red bows. 

They were there to congratulate Mr. Peng on his one-in-a-billion achievement, what none of them thought he could possibly ever do - find his lost son, Peng Wenle.

The visit was remarkable because Peng Gaofeng found his son not with the assistance of police - but despite them.

Over the past two years, police have threatened Mr. Peng and have demanded he stop speaking to journalists.  It's unclear why, but one possibility was that Mr. Peng's very public hunt for his son reflected poorly on the city's safety record.

And, along this father's journey across the province and beyond, he had befriended other parents of missing children.  One of them, Sun Haiyang, began working closely with Mr. Peng, and together they compiled a list of abducted children that numbered in the thousands.  A group of them even travelled all the way to Beijing in the hopes of bringing attention to their cause.  They were harassed, and sent back home by police instead.

Online tools

It was Mr. Peng who tracked down his son with the power of the Internet.  He'd set up his own online Sina Weibo account, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter, and posted pictures up of little Wenle.  Of the 80 million Chinese users on Weibo, surely, one would recognise the boy.

This was done just as Professor Yu Jianrong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences launched his own online campaign from Beijing to track down missing children.  The professor encouraged people to get involved, to photograph street children who too often, he felt, were victims of abductions and human trafficking. 

The photographs would be posted online.  Tens of thousands of people responded to Yu's call, creating buzz and national interest.  And amidst them all, one curious university student found his way to Peng Gao Feng's site and recognized little Wenle as a neighbor's boy.

The miracle reunion happened because of the involvement of ordinary citizens and the most tenacious father in the world.

The government, however, has not been won over.

When Al Jazeera learned Mr. Peng had found Wenle -- we were particularly excited.  We had interviewed Mr. Peng more than two years ago, following the kidnapping of his son.  No one could have possibly believed the father would succeed against all odds.  And, we also rang up Professor Yu.

And that's when we sensed something was wrong.  Professor Yu would not pick up his phone and would not respond to text messages.  Only days ago, he'd been amiable and open to discussing his project, but for whatever reason, he was no longer talking about or promoting his website.  And Mr. Sun, whose son remained missing, reported police intimidation even as he tried to capitalise on his association with his friend, Mr. Peng and all the media attention he was getting.  In fact, Shenzhen Public Security warned Mr. Sun that any meeting of five parents or more would constitute an illegal gathering.

'Government threatened'

Even more appallingly, a state-run newspaper The Global Times came out with an editorial warning citizens that "the crackdown on trafficking children... should be largely left to the police."

Charles Custer, a filmmaker in Beijing currently working on a documentary about child trafficking, believes this has nothing to do with the government actually opposing the idea that parents seek out their children (you can read more by Charles on the matter, here).

"The government is threatened, I think, by the movement because it represents the masses attempting to collectively and directly address a social problem, completely circumventing the system."

In other words, the people organised.  And to leaders, any organisation other than the Communist Party is perceived as a threat to the system.  However paranoid that might seem to outsiders, Beijing firmly believes that the existence of civil society, for whatever purposes, could potentially lead to organisations of the more dangerous sort - the kind that could oppose power.

And so police continue to threaten Mr. Sun.  The father ignores the threats.

"I will never give up finding my son.  I will continue using Sina Weibo and online social networking to try to find him," he said.  His friend Peng Gaofeng's success, motivates him.

And every day, on Sina Weibo, he reposts this message that is always the same:

"Sun Zhou was born on December 7th, 2003.  On October 9th, 2007, in front of our storefront, a man of about 40 years of age, with some snacks and a toy car in hand, lured him way.  The kidnapper is bald at the crown of his head, was wearing brown shoes, and carrying a laptop bag.  Supermarket surveillance video captured the entire incident.  If you have any information about my son, please call 159 2005 4088 also http://sinaurl.cn/hqe1A3."