Returning Victorious
"They came at about midnight, or maybe half an hour later. They cut off the power first. There were more than 3,000 officers. All the roads were full of police cars and other vehicles. People with friends in the public security bureau said 3,000 to 4,000 people were sent."
Shangpu, Guangdong villager
This reads like a scenario out of one of the dissident-Chinese-authors' novels detailing the oppressive local communist bureaucracies trampling on the rights of farmers and rural dwellers, in arbitrarily confiscating land and property. But where would the idea of such a plot line come from if not from the reality of just such situations?
Chinese security forces proceeded in Shangpu village, Guangdong province, to teach a lesson to the protesters in that rural area. As their village was surrounded, their power and phone lines were severed, and tear gas and stun grenades were fired at random. This was a needed bit of official reaction to an 18-day rebellion, of course. The result of which was that dozens of villagers were hospitalized.
And just incidentally six people arrested. Older people among the 60 who were injured were in the majority. Some suffered broken bones, one man experienced what it felt like to have a stun grenade explode in his face. The villagers have accused the local government of having sold out from under them a 33-hectare plot of land, without consultation.
Perhaps, in their physical protest and outraged verbalizing of their refusal to accept such illegal expropriations, they took their new premier, Wen Jiabao's pledge - to overhaul the regime for land expropriations for the purpose of allowing farmers more authority - seriously.
The annual session of the national legislature had recently received a report which claimed guaranteeing "farmers' property rights and interests" remains the fixed purpose of the country's rural land system; "central to China's rural stability and long-term development."
Unfortunately, claim farmers and poor peasants, conniving local officials and developers have long made it a practise of cheating them. Villagers in Shangpu had fought back for three hours, their weapons being spades, stones and wooden sticks, against the police. One of the paramilitary police posted his personal take on the raid on China's version of Twitter.
"We have returned victorious, how exciting! Tossing stones, throwing flash grenades, stun grenades, tear gas, really exciting but very tiring. Luckily we all came back without injury", wrote Chen Zhiming.
Labels: China, Conflict, Controversy, Corruption, Human Relations, Natural Resources, Social Failures
posted by Pieface @ Friday, March 15, 2013
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