Bank customers in China face harassment and job loss after protesting frozen funds

SHANGHAI — A woman who was injured on Sunday when a protest by roughly 1,000 bank customers in central China was violently broken up by security personnel said she continues to face harassment.

Still bearing bruises from kicks to her front and back, the 32-year-old woman, surnamed Geng, said she was awoken on Tuesday morning by loud knocks on her door from men claiming there was a water leak in her flat.

“I don’t know how they found me, they came to my house, but it’s under my mom’s name,” said Geng, who asked that only her surname be used given the sensitivity of the matter.

She said she threatened to jump out of the window if they tried to enter, then hid in her room for three hours as the two men in black, whom she could not identify, stood watch outside the apartment complex before she left from a different stairwell.

Other customers of the four small Henan province banks where at least $1.5 billion in deposits have been frozen since April have also reported harassment in a case that has dramatically exposed strains in a corner of China’s financial sector.

“It’s happened to a lot of investors — they want to wipe our phones, they want to take the videos and the evidence,” said Geng, who along with her mother had deposited 110,000 yuan ($16,354) at one of the banks.

Customers, who have grown increasingly assertive in calling attention to their grievances, told Reuters that police, village Communist Party officials and employers had visited them and their families in recent weeks to pressure them not to protest, including threat of job loss.

“The village party secretary will go to your house, will talk to your family and say that you’re making trouble,” said one, surnamed Chen, who said he was accused of being an overseas spy for speaking with foreign media.

After Sunday’s protest in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, turned violent, police announced that they had arrested a number of accomplices in a scheme masterminded by Lu Yi, who they said used the banks to illegally siphon off money through a company he controls called Henan Xincaifu Group.

The statement did not say whether Lu was among those arrested. No one could be immediately reached at the group’s official email address for comment.

Police in Henan province and China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to requests for further comment.

While it is unclear whether the Henan bank troubles have wider ramifications, China’s thousands of small and midsize…