Shanghai petitioner Ma Chunying has been blocked inside a Beijing hotel by six unidentified people and prevented from going outside for 21 days

On September 14, 2026, this outlet learned that Shanghai petitioner Ma Chunying has been blocked inside a Beijing hotel by six unidentified people and prevented from going outside for 21 days. She entered Beijing on August 23, 2026, and was blocked early the next morning. Over the past 21 days, she has not only lacked medical care and medicine, but has even had difficulty getting food.

Ma Chunying began petitioning after a labor dispute with her employer. Later, following coordination by the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration and the Shanghai Municipal Office of Letters and Calls, the Hongkou District government reached an oral agreement with Ma Chunying through the Liangcheng Subdistrict, under which the government would pay her living expenses every month, and she agreed to stop pursuing her petition and cease petitioning. However, in 2014, the Hongkou District government stopped paying the subsidy. After she continued negotiating with the Liangcheng Subdistrict, the Hongkou District government and the Shanghai municipal government without success, she began going to Beijing to lodge complaints.

Between 2003 and 2020, while petitioning in Beijing, Ma Chunying was repeatedly subjected to violent interception, detained more than ten times, and illegally imprisoned for more than 600 days. She filed complaints with procuratorates multiple times, but none were accepted.

On July 17, 2020, Ma Chunying was taken back to Shanghai in Beijing by police from the Public Security Detachment of the Hongkou Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau. She was immediately criminally detained and arrested, and on December 24 of the same year, she was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for the “crime of disrupting state order.”