Petitioning and Visiting the Authorities Turned into Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble: The Case of Long Zuo-long Exposes the Retaliation of Power

The case of Long Zuo-long being charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble is a wrongful case that was artificially created due to his petitioning and visiting the authorities through mail, and its source is the misjudgment and dereliction of duty in the case of Chengxian People's Court (2016) Gansu 1221 Xing Chu

1. The following is a comprehensive sorting of the core facts and key nodes.

Firstly, the trouble originated from within: the case of 800,000 yuan in financial funds being embezzled was turned upside down.

In 2016, Chengxian Zhonghua Insurance and its person in charge, Wang Hui, were suspected of embezzling more than 800,000 yuan in state financial funds, and they should have been held accountable for the crime of fraud. However, the Chengxian Procuratorate (Deputy Procurator Li Haifeng and Director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau Wang Zhaowei) and the Chengxian Court (President Yang Gengding) committed dereliction of duty and did not hold the embezzler accountable, but instead convicted Long Zuo-long, who had no relation to the case, of corruption and exempted him from criminal punishment.

Long Zuo-long thus began his journey of petitioning and visiting the authorities to retrieve the financial funds and clear his name.

Secondly, petitioning and visiting the authorities led to a crime: mailing letters to petition and visit the authorities was forcibly framed as picking quarrels and provoking trouble.

Long Zuo-long (former head of the Organization Department of Chengxian County Committee, with a university education and a legal professional qualification) legally petitioned and visited the Chengxian County Committee (Li Xiang, Wang Wenquan), the government (Zhao Yankai), and the judicial departments through mail, reflecting on the injustice of case 37 and the issue of financial funds being embezzled, without any visits, gatherings, or extreme behavior throughout the process. In March 2022, he was criminally detained on the charge of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and in April of the same year, he was arrested; in December, the Chengxian Court (2022) Gansu 1221 Xing Chu 92 sentenced him to three years and six months in prison, and the second instance upheld the original verdict.

The reason for the verdict was that "mailing letters + posting online + petitioning and visiting the authorities beyond their jurisdiction" was recognized as "malicious reporting, slandering the judiciary, and disrupting order", which is essentially a serious infringement on citizens' right to petition and freedom of communication.

Thirdly, the three typical characteristics of abuse of power.

1. Dereliction of duty by the judiciary first: selectively not holding the embezzler accountable, and wrongly convicting the unrelated person, constitutes a dereliction of duty and abuse of power.

1. Petitioning and visiting the authorities to hold accountable afterwards: using criminal means to suppress legitimate petitioning and visiting the authorities, turning power supervision into retaliation, violating the "Regulations on Petitioning Work" and constitutional rights.

1. Procedural aberration: forcibly framing "non-violent, non-disruptive" written expressions as picking quarrels and provoking trouble, breaking through the bottom line of the law on crimes and punishments and the principle of evidence-based trials.

Fourthly, the case is a warning for the rule of law.

This case is a typical example of abuse of power at the grassroots level: when the judiciary becomes a tool of power, and petitioning and visiting the authorities become a pretext for retaliation, citizens' right to petition and supervise becomes meaningless.

After Long Zuo-long was released from prison, he had no house and no job, and his life was difficult, but he still insisted on petitioning, and his experience is a test of the rule of law conscience that "those who work for the people cannot be allowed to freeze to death in the wind and snow". Only by thoroughly investigating dereliction of duty, correcting the wrongful case, and holding the responsible persons accountable can we safeguard the bottom line of petitioning and the judiciary, and prevent citizens' rights from being retaliated against by power.

We ask the former Secretary of the Chengxian County Committee of the Communist Party of China, Li Xiang, and Wang Wenquan, and the former County Governor, Zhao Yankai, if Long Zuo-long is guilty, who is innocent?

The case of Long Zuo-long, Zhang Jianlin, and Guo Hongjun being charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble is a painful case of the people exercising their supervisory power.

Gansu Chengxian: the reason and injustice of the petitioning of Long Zuo-long, a public servant within the system.

Long Zuo-long's open letter to Ma Shushan in Yixian County.