Absence of Justice

A crazed man detonates an explosive at a busy international airport. We think we know the story line: a suicide bomber surely, a twisted faith perhaps, scattered limbs of innocent passersby. But the narrative shifts — and the bomber is suddenly cast in the role of victim by the online community. Some even call the government to account.

Early in the evening of July 20, in the international-arrivals hall of Beijing Capital International Airport, Ji Zhongxing sat in his wheelchair, holding a white package and a stack of leaflets. The documents referred to the beating he claimed to have received in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan at the hands of the chengguan, a municipal urban-management force that operates with startling impunity across the nation.

The former motorcycle-taxi driver, who was paralyzed by the beating and spent eight years petitioning the government for justice, held up the mysterious parcel. He shouted for everyone to stay clear. Then, in the only way he must have believed he could draw attention to his plight, Ji triggered his homemade bomb. (Doctors later amputated his hand; there were no other significant injuries at the airport.) “If this happened in any other airport in any other country, he would be recognized as a terrorist,” Li Chengpeng, one of China’s most daring bloggers, tells TIME. “But because it happened in China, where people have nowhere to redress injustice, he has gained more sympathy than blame.”

(MORE: Crackdowns and Executions Provoke Shock and Outrage in China’s Business Community)

China’s airport bomber is only the latest desperate individual to provoke online compassion in a nation where the judicial system is calibrated both to allow for extralegal oppression and to prevent the remedying of citizens’ grievances. Three days before the airport explosion, a watermelon seller in central China died on the street after being attacked by chengguan. The next day, in the country’s northeast, another vendor was beaten by a clutch of urban-management thugs. Meanwhile, thousands of petitioners, each armed with a tale of official malfeasance, continue to flock to Beijing, hoping that an ancient system of bringing their woes to the Emperor — or, at least, to the State Bureau for Letters and Visits — will result in wrongs righted. Their wishes are misplaced. “In China, we have courts and lawyers, but we have no rule of law,” says blogger Li, whose Sina Weibo social-media account was shuttered by censors after he posted on the watermelon vendor’s death. “Almost every week, two or three similar incidents happen. It’s dizzying.”

It’s also numbing. Every few days, I receive a text message from petitioners who in a sentence or two try to plead their case for publication in TIME. “Please help me things,” said one message in broken English I received earlier this month from a farmer I’ve known for years. Apple grower Yu Baozhong has sustained multiple beatings and jailings after daring to challenge the local chieftains by winning a village election. When he calls, which is often, I no longer know how to respond.

What I think but do not say is that in more than a decade of interviewing petitioners, I have never met a single person who has succeeded in receiving suitable compensation or justice. With the rise of Chinese microblogging, or Weibo, some of the most egregious instances of abuse of power get a public airing. This is a huge change from a few years before. Indeed, China’s state broadcaster has announced that Dongguan authorities are reopening Ji’s case. But should it take a homemade bomb at one of the world’s largest airports to trigger such action?

Despite an anticorruption drive initiated by President Xi Jinping, there is little indication yet of political or social reform. One of China’s bravest activists, Xu Zhiyong, was locked up on July 16. Then his lawyer was briefly detained. In early June, Du Bin, a crusading Chinese photographer whose pictures have appeared in TIME, was detained and accused of spreading rumors, disturbing social order and printing illegal publications.

While Du is now out on bail, his freedom is tenuous. But he considers himself lucky compared with the petitioners whom he has chronicled for a decade. Some have committed suicide; others have allowed their despair to metastasize into violence against society. “It’s so sad that ordinary people have to resort to such extreme methods to attract the government’s attention,” says Du. Airport bomber Ji now holds his nation’s interest. As expected, he is under criminal detention. But no one, not even his family, has been told exactly where. Ji Zhongxing is still lost.

MORE: A Reformist Chinese Leader? Stop Fooling Yourself