CHINA-INTERNAL: UNREST AMONG PLA VETERANS
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Authorities in Beijing have detained hundreds of former People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers after thousands of them staged a sit-in outside China's Central Military Command on June 23, 2015, in protest over a lack of pension and other benefits. The protesters, mostly veterans of China's brief 1979 border war with Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet border conflict of March 1969, converged on the Central Military Commission (CMC) headquarters in Beijing on June 23 morning. Zhejiang-based PLA veteran Sun Enwei was quoted by RFA as saying that he had counted around 3,000 retired PLA soldiers outside the complaints department of the CMC before the authorities took some of them to the Jiujingzhuang unofficial detention center on the outskirts of Beijing. "More than 800 people have been forcibly taken to Jiujingzhuang," Sun said. He added that "They have informed the local governments that ... they have to send people to Jiujingzhuang to pick them up" and government interceptors, law enforcement officials charged with detaining petitioners to higher levels of government and returning them to their hometowns, were out in force. Sun Enwei said "There are more than 3,000 of us here in Beijing, but there are at least 5,000 interceptors" and "If they hadn't intercepted some of us, there would have been at least 10,000." The protesters are demanding that veterans from more than 20 cities and provinces be given government payouts and social benefits as promised to them under Chinese law. Reports sate that veterans from Hubei, Sichuan etc were intercepted and unable to reach Beijing.
An official who answered the phone at the CMC complaints department declined to comment. "I don't know about this," the official said.
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