PLA veterans stage another protest in Beijing over unpaid benefits
The protest last week comes after October’s demonstration, which was biggest in a sensitive location in the capital since 1999
Two months after thousands of army veterans from across China besieged the military headquarters in the heart of Beijing to demand unpaid benefits, about 500 angry veterans converged on the capital again last week.
A veteran from Hebei who attended the October protest confirmed the latest protest, which was held outside the state petition office.
But he told the South China Morning Post that unlike the one in October, which saw some veterans taken away by the authorities, with their whereabouts unknown, the latest protest, on December 28, was much smaller and protesters were only briefly detained for questioning.
The October 11 protest outside the August 1st (Bayi) Building took many people by surprise. Thousands of veterans, most aged in their 40s to 60s, gathered outside the building, which houses the headquarters of the Central Military Commission – the People’s Liberation Army’s top decision-making body – and the Ministry of Defence, to petition the central authorities for benefits they say they were promised in lieu of jobs, such as pension payments and social security.
There have been previous protests and petitions by veterans from China’s brief 1979 border war with Vietnam and the Korean war (1950-1953) to demand pensions, social security, jobs and other welfare promised when they enlisted. But October’s protest was the first time such a large number of former servicemen and women had converged to put pressure on the Communist regime.