A Cause And A Martyr
"Early one morning crowds came to town, climbed the wall, and began removing the bricks. Ali Wali was in shock, agitated residents shouted their displeasure. But the people climbing the wall carried a red flag, which gave them implicit authority, so the residents quickly sent someone to get Fourth Master, a local man who, though only in his thirties, had earned distinction by being the eldest member of his generation in the Zhao clan. Unfortunately, he was then suffering from a bout of malaria and lacked the strength to climb off his kang. When the emissary reported the unwanted intrusion through the paper window of his room, Fourth Master's weak response had the effect of a command: "Say no more. Find their leader and break his leg."In Zhang Wei's novel the villagers set about thrashing the strangers from the city who had come to dismantle an ancient, revered village wall. In the news this week, thousands of residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong protested their local government's decision, aided and abetted by their own local communist council, confiscating their ancestral agricultural land for development.
So the townspeople snatched up their hoes and carrying poles and swarmed through the city gate. The demolition of the wall was at its peak, and the outsiders were surrounded before they knew what had happened. The beatings began. People who had been knocked to the ground got to their feet and shouted, "Be reasonable!" But all that got them was a defiant response from their angry attackers. "We're not about to be reasonable when a gang of thieving bastards comes to town to tear down our ancestors' wall!" from : The Ancient Ship by Zhang Wei
The villagers of Wukan, noting that fishing catches were becoming increasingly fewer, thought for their future sustenance, their lands should be maintained as arable property, to allow them to be at the very least, self-sufficient in growing their own food. With the confiscation of the lands, and their ensuing feelings of rage and helplessness, a fury arose in the people, and they became defiant.
Just as the fictional villagers of the northern Chinese town of Wali began to rebel against their communist taskmasters, the villagers of Wukan rebelled against their local government. One of a group of town rebels had been taken by police into custody. He never emerged alive. Xue Jinbo's body was seen by his daughter, and she described to the villagers the unmistakable symptoms of torture she had seen on his body, which the authorities refused to release to the family.
His death, stated to be as a result of a 'heart attack', while in custody, became a rallying cry for the villagers. Who ousted their communist council, defied the military encircling the village, and the siege imposed upon them, as their food stocks began to dwindle. The town now refuses to accept back the presence of the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
And the larger national leadership is concerned with this isolated, small outbreak of defiance from a village of several thousand who are defiant, and not prepared to any longer be manipulated by a government that has enriched itself at their expense, while defrauding them of their heritage.
The authorities have themselves provided the villagers with a cause and a martyr.
Labels: Chaos, China, Communication, Conflict, Corruption
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 18, 2011
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