Since the age of 27, Tang Yingcheng, 71, has been forced to have a lifelong "goal" - appeal. In December 1976, an armed struggle broke out in two villages in Yulin, Guangxi Province, killing one person, and Tang Yingcheng was arrested shortly after. He claimed that he did not participate in the armed struggle but was convicted of being the "first offender". During his 15 years in prison, Tang Yingcheng wrote 495 appeals and escaped from prison to appeal during his sentence. Although several parties have since proved that he did not plot and participate in the armed struggle, the case has not been retried, and he has been crying out for 44 years.
According to the "Judgment", after Tang Ting'ai of Bangshan Village knocked Chen Mou of Bei'an Village to the ground, Tang Huofen, a villager of Bangshan Village, saw the situation and then went forward to beat him with a stick, and Chen was beaten to the ground and died after rescue was ineffective. In the spring of 1976, Tang Yingcheng deliberately created contradictions. "Planting first, first getting" mobilized the villagers to forcibly dig up and plant trees to provoke contradictions, and repeatedly held meetings of captains to offer advice and incite the masses. Under the planning of Tang Yingcheng, the first armed struggle with Bei'an Village occurred on May 15, 1976, and then bad ideas, bad ideas, and many parties created incidents, until December 13 and 14, 1976, and there was an armed fight with Bei'an Village. As a result, 1 person was killed, 2 people were seriously injured, and more than 20 people were slightly injured...
It is worth noting that the verdict does not record that Tang Yingcheng participated in the armed struggle. Tang Yingcheng recalled that he was then the militia battalion commander and director of public security of the Kuilian Brigade, and he was studying at the party school when the armed struggle occurred. So far, Tang Yingcheng believes that the accusations against him in this "Judgment" do not conform to the facts, and the root cause of the armed struggle is not the contradiction caused by planting trees. Eighteen villagers gave a collective testimony for Tang Yingcheng, saying that he had not participated in or planned an armed struggle.
Qin Chengyue, a villager who was watching the gun fight at that time, said: "At that time, the young people in the village were beaten, and some people said that our village was bullied because of the lack of unity, so many people went. "Qin Chengyue recalled that the working group arrested many people for the purpose of investigating the case." At that time, my husband was a substitute teacher, and he did not participate in the armed struggle at all, but even he was arrested and locked up for 7 days before returning. Tang Yingcheng did not participate, just pulled him to pad his back. ”
In August 1977, the "Judgment" characterized him as the first offender, and the sentence was the same as that of Tang Huofen and Tang Ting'ai, who caused death, and both were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The public prosecution for the verdict is the Yulin County Public Security Bureau.
In September 1977, Tang Yingcheng began to write complaint materials after being transferred to Yingshan Prison in Guangxi. "I wrote a lot of letters of appeal that were sunk in the sea, and there was no hope in writing letters, so I thought of running away and appealing." The Yuzhou District Court's reply letter confirmed that Tang Yingcheng had indeed escaped from prison to complain to a ministry in Beijing. "Others escape from prison and either go home or flee. The purpose of my escape from prison was to go to Beijing to complain and to self-impose a net. Eventually, Mr. Tang said, he went to a Ministry in Beijing and stated his "grievances" to the staff.
"The staff called the police after taking notes. After returning to prison, someone asked me why I didn't survive in anonymity since I had all run away, and I said that if I did, I would really not be able to wash away my grievances. Tang Yingcheng increased his sentence by one year for committing the crime of escape. He continued his complaint in prison, writing 495 documents until his release, but no response was given.
At the time of the armed struggle, 26-year-old Tang Yingcheng was the father of two children and a cadre of the production team who held several positions. He became a criminal, and his two children were discriminated against by their classmates, and his personality became introverted and withdrawn. In 1989, he returned home after completing his sentence, and although his father and son were reunited, the 12-year relationship was difficult to repair. "The two sons said I hadn't raised them for so many years, and they wouldn't listen to me, and they didn't have any contact with each other later." In his work, he has encountered a lot of discrimination because of his status as a "criminal". After the age of 65, no company dared to hire him again. In order to make a living, he had to work as a low-paid temporary worker such as a janitor and a dishwasher who did not sign a labor contract.
Today, he is the only one who has been sentenced for armed fighting, and he knows that some of the members of the working group are very old, some have passed away, and fewer and fewer people can tell clearly the case that year, but he has never given up his complaint. "I was not given the opportunity to defend myself, the evidence collected was not legal, I asked for a retrial, and I could not bear the false charges for the rest of my life."
On the morning of October 21, the reporter and Tang Yingcheng went to the Yuzhou District People's Court to ask again about the progress of his application for retrial. The judge did not agree to retrieve and copy the case file materials of that year, and the receiving judge said that he would have to discuss the question of whether to retry before giving a reply.