河南济源贾红玲.doc

河南济源贾红玲 BEIJING — In March 1997, Jia Hongling was raped bya low-level manager ofa pany in Henan Province. The 28-year-old daughter ofa farmer and a construction worker, Jia reported the sexual assault to the police in her hometown of Jiyuan in central China. That July, the policeman assigned to investigate her allegations invited Jia toa room and then, with two men standing watch outside, raped her, according to Jia's account. It took Jia eight years of plaints in Jiyuan and making trips to Beijing to beg for justice before the first man was sentenced to five years in prison. The policeman in the second incident, however, was never brought to trial — despite a report from the Jiyuan prosecutor's office saying there was "strong evidence" a rape had occurred. Now 42, Jia still travels to Beijing, lining up at one government office after another to submit forms that she knows probably will just be forwarded back to the Jiyuan city government. Wearing an orange waist pack and lugging a paper bag stuffed with documents that outline her grievances — there was also a wage dispute with a state-owned printing factory — Jia has joined the unknown number of petitioners who converge on China's capital to seek redress. A pilgrimage of sorts, petitioning isa ritual with ties to imperial times. Today, it isa journey marked largely by futility, emblematic of the distance between official talk