article: Ji Zhongxing, 34, was being prevented by police from handing out leaflets at the airport which described the desperate story of his life. Witnesses said that Ji then shouted out: "I have a bomb, stay away from me!" And then he set off the device. He blew off his own hand and slightly injured one policeman. Witness accounts immediately appeared on social media. The mayhem after the blast was described by East Asia analyst Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt on Twitter who was there at the time: "Huge explosion followed by panic, smoke and dust at Terminal 3." On Tuesday 15 October Ji was sentenced to six years in prison for his act. His actions were condemned as reckless and the court said that he had to be held accountable, but Ji Zhongxing has nonetheless attracted a great deal of sympathy and struck a chord with China's legions of microbloggers. One user posted: "The court believes that he must take legal responsibility for his action. But who should take legal responsibility for what had driven Ji Zhongxing to do all this?" If the world has now forgotten about what drove him to detonate the bomb on 20 July, China's blogging public has not. His story is seen as typical of China's most marginalised and unfortunate members of society; petitioners driven to desperate measures when faced by an apparently unyielding bureaucracy. Petitioners are people who believe they have been wronged by lower levels of government and bring their grievances to the attention of the higher authorities. Although they are officially allowed to do this, rights groups say the government does prevent petitioners speaking out about their treatment and allege there is an entire underground system of surveillance and so-called "black jails" used to silence them - the authorities routinely deny such allegations. But what is clear is that Ji Zhongxing had been campaigning for years to have his story heard - to little avail. It all centres around one incident on 28 June 2005 and there are two versions of what really happened that night. At that time Ji had a day job as a security guard for a firm in Dongguan in south China's Guangdong province. By night he drove an auto-rickshaw to ferry passengers around to supplement his income. He wanted to save money to marry his girlfriend - who was also a migrant worker in the city. In the early hours of that morning members of a local security force, known as zhianduiyuan, employed by the government to maintain order, approached Ji who was driving his rickshaw and demanded to check his documents. Their job included tackling unlicenced vehicles such as his. Ji says that he was chased by the officials and once he was caught he received a brutal and sustained beating that left him paralysed in his lower limbs. The officials say he was injured after he fell from his vehicle. On his microblog (which has now apparently been deleted) he said: "seven or eight zhianduiyuan blocked the road - iron bars in their hands. As I was about to stop,
summary: When a man in a wheelchair detonated a small home-made bomb in Beijing's international airport in July, he momentarily captured the world's attention.