Ma Yalian (马亚莲), a Shanghai rights defender, went to Beijing to petition during the period of the Two Congresses, and had planned to protest on Tiananmen Square. But to avoid being harassed by the police, Ma had to hide at a friend’s home where she used her friend’s computer to send out the essay.

In her essay, Ma criticizes a suggestion by Jia Qinglin, the former head of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), to establish a new mechanism empowered to terminate any petitions that it deems “abnormal.” Calling the suggestion a “brazen defiance and distortion of the law," Ma says that such a mechanism “will inevitably lead to a greater surge of grievances, and will never put an end to 'abnormal petitioning,' only to the 'rule of law.'”