CHINA:Fu Xiancai, an activist for those displaced by the mammoth Three Gorges Dam project who was paralysed after an attack last year, is taking his appeal for justice to China's annual parliament, the National People's Congress, which started this week.
The 12-day event may just be a rubberstamp parliament and a talking shop for the country's communist cadres, but the National People's Congress is also the largest gathering of opinion on China's calendar and is a useful forum for gauging what's on the mind of the general populace and for forecasting what moves the government is likely to make.
The congress is likely to pass a groundbreaking new law on property rights, a significant symbolic move which will give legal force to a right to private property already enshrined in the constitution.
Most believe it's unlikely to make a huge difference to the 800 million rural Chinese, who are increasingly irritated by having their land taken away seemingly at will by greedy speculators, and by the ever-expanding wealth gap which leaves their incomes further and further behind those of their compatriots in the rich eastern cities.
Not that the general populace will be allowed anywhere near the site of the meeting, the Soviet-era Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.
There are thousands of police keeping tabs on things in the city and most petitioners trying to have their problems heard by the 3,000 delegates to the meeting are being kept at a distance.
Fu Xiancai has been working to get compensation for some of the million-plus people who had to move when their homes were flooded by the dam.
His demand for payment in full for those resettled by the dam is a controversial one - after I met him at the dam in central Hubei province last year, I was detained and interrogated by police. A few weeks later he was beaten after meeting with police in Zigui county and barely escaped alive.
A police investigation said Mr Fu's injuries were self-inflicted, so now he plans to try and make the NPC hear his case. He has appealed directly to National People's Congress standing committee chairman, Wu Bangguo, to intervene, according to a statement by Human Rights in China.
"Although it has been eight months since I was attacked, I have not completely lost my faith in China's judicial process, and pass every pain-filled day in hope that justice will soon arrive," Mr Fu said.
One of the big Bills tabled at the parliament will be China's first law on property rights, which for the first time under the communist government grants the same protection for state, collective and private property.
The aim is to create a better environment for doing business in China and last year it was pushed off the agenda by hardliners.
The notion of private property is already part of the constitution but this new Bill is a milestone because it will be a landmark towards enshrining private property rights.
The delegates are still debating the wording of the Bill, which will be presented to the National People's Congress on Thursday and likely to be passed at the closing session on March 16th.
They will also give their approval to plans to boost defence spending by 17.8 per cent in 2007, marking another year of double-digit annual increases in money for missiles and tanks, much to the chagrin of Taiwan.
Meanwhile, actor Gong Li, who starred alongside Irish actor Colin Farrell in Miami Vice, is using her status as a delegate to the parliament to discuss environmental issues.
"Things will become really terrible if we don't take environmental protection more seriously," Ms Gong said in an interview with China Daily, during a break in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference group discussion.