Massacre in China

[Japher]

China is now the enemy

[DanS]

The WaPo has a good article about what happened. Quoted entire.

Chinese Police Kill Villagers During Two-Day Land Protest

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 9, 2005; A01

DONGZHOU, China, Dec. 8 -- Paramilitary police and anti-riot units opened fire with pistols and automatic rifles Tuesday night and Wednesday night on farmers and fishermen who had attacked them with gasoline bombs and explosive charges, according to residents of this small coastal village.

The sustained volleys of gunfire, unprecedented in a wave of peasant uprisings over the last two years in China, killed between 10 and 20 villagers and injured more, according to the residents. The count was uncertain, they said, because a number of villagers could not be located after the confrontations.

The tough response by black-clad riot troops and People's Armed Police in camouflage fatigues deviated sharply from previous government tactics against the spreading unrest in Chinese villages and industrial suburbs. As far as is known, authorities put down all previous riots using truncheons and tear gas, but without firearms.

This time, according to a witness, police responded to villagers throwing explosives by firing "very rapid bursts of gunfire" over a period of several hours both nights. Some villagers reported seeing police carrying AK-47 assault rifles, one of the Chinese military's standard-issue weapons. There were no reports of violence Thursday night.

The villagers were protesting land confiscations in Dongzhou, a community of 10,000 residents 14 miles southeast of Shanwei city, in Guangdong province near Hong Kong. In their confrontation with authorities, they also stepped up their tactics by using homemade bombs and explosive charges that local fishermen normally use to stun fish in the adjacent South China Sea. In previous riot reports, attacks against police were limited to throwing stones and bricks or setting fire to official vehicles.

The Communist Party and the city administration of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over Dongzhou, held all-day meetings Thursday on the violence, officials said. A spokesman for the city government, however, refused to discuss what happened in the village and declined to give his name. He said only that local authorities were taking the crisis seriously.

There also was no public response from the Guangdong provincial Communist Party and government, which have faced several long-running and violent confrontations involving land confiscations over the last year. The government-censored press and television have not reported on the violence in Dongzhou.

Police set up a roadblock at the edge of the village, stopping most vehicles from entering or leaving, and white Public Security vehicles patrolled the main road linking Dongzhou with Shanwei. Pedestrians and motorcycles were allowed to pass in and out of the village, however, and buses waited for passengers just outside the checkpoint.

About 700 yards away on the main street, approximately 100 villagers glared Thursday afternoon at a force of about 300 riot police who wore helmets and carried shields and batons. An officer using an electric loudspeaker repeatedly urged residents to leave.

"This has nothing to do with you," he called out. "Return to your houses."

The long-simmering conflict in Dongzhou arose over disputed confiscations and what farmers here said were inadequate compensation payments. Authorities exercising the equivalent of eminent domain seized farmers' fields to build a wind-driven electric generating plant on a hillside overlooking the village. The plant would be part of a $700 million electricity development project to supply the growing power needs of Shanwei and surrounding towns and villages.

Villagers, contacted by telephone, complained that the compensation was inadequate. Moreover, they charged, the power plant would also spoil fishing in Baisha Lake, a tidal inlet just below the hill, on which villagers rely heavily for food.

The confrontation was typical of the tension between the drive for economic development in China -- which has a growth rate of 9 percent a year-- and farmers' desire to retain the land that they regard as security for their families. Land disputes have been a prime reason for popular explosions of violence, which the Public Security Ministry estimates involved 3.76 million people in 74,000 incidents during 2004.

The pressure is particularly acute here in Guangdong province and the Pearl River Delta where, during the last two decades of economic liberalization, factories and dormitories have steadily replaced rice paddies, corn fields and fruit orchards that used to flourish in the warm, wet climate.

For most of this year, Dongzhou villagers have been protesting on and off against the power plant project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2007 but now delayed.

The villagers interviewed, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the current round of violence was set off when authorities arrested three village leaders who had gone to the hillside plant site Tuesday afternoon to lodge a complaint. Before long, they said, several thousand people gathered on the hilltop to demand their release.

They were dispersed by volleys of tear gas fired by police, residents said. Shortly afterward, authorities dispatched between 400 and 500 more riot police into the village as reinforcements, the residents said. That contingent was met by several thousand angry villagers, they added, and police again resorted to tear gas at about dusk. This time, however, some villagers responded by pelting police with the explosives, according to witnesses, and the police unloosed sustained pistol and automatic-weapons fire over the subsequent three hours.

A similar confrontation occurred Wednesday evening on the main street in the village, leading to more attacks with gasoline bombs and several more hours of shooting, the villagers said. "The police kept on shooting until they drove away all the villagers," said a witness.

In the absence of official information from the government or Dongzhou hospital, reports flew from family to family of villagers killed, bodies burned and relatives unable to retrieve their slain loved ones left lying in the street. Some said 20 villagers were killed each night; others said the total was 14.

"I saw the bodies lying there," said one witness to the violence on Tuesday night. "The family members were afraid to go and get them."

One villager said his younger brother, Liu Yudui, 26, was hit by two rounds, one in the heart and one in the abdomen, after he stepped outside to see what was going on. "He died before we could get him to the hospital," the brother said.

Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.

[Arrian]

attacked them with gasoline bombs and explosive charges

So, fireworkers or molitov cockails?

-Arrian

[Timexwatch]

Fishing explosives. They set them off to stun fish and then scoop them up.

[DaShi]

Unfortunately, as protests rise the responses by authorities have become more and more violent and cruel. But this is a major step backward and will do little to improve China's still tarnished post-Tiannanmen image. I'm a bit surprised it was allowed for that reason alone, but this was an act by the local officials. We'll have to see what the central government's response is.

An article on increased abuse for those who complain:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/international/asia/09china.html

Chinese Abused for Complaints, Study Concludes

By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: December 9, 2005
BEIJING, Dec. 8 - For centuries, Chinese with a grievance against the government have used an elaborate petition system in the hope, often in vain, of imperial redress.

But that ancient recourse is so abused by Chinese authorities today that petitioners seem as likely to be harassed, kidnapped, jailed or tortured as they are to have their complaints adjudicated by a higher authority, Human Rights Watch reported Thursday.

Some 10 million people filed petitions at the provincial and national level in 2004, the group said, citing Chinese statistics. But only 3 in 2,000, or about one-seventh of 1 percent, got a result they considered satisfactory.

Instead, many who complain are apprehended at petition sites and forcibly sent home to keep them from embarrassing local officials, the report says. Repeat offenders are often jailed or sentenced to extrajudicial labor camps. The most ardent activists are tortured until they agree to stop filing complaints, anecdotes that the rights group compiled for its 89-page report indicated.

"In a one-party system intolerant of dissent, petitioning is one of the only ways that ordinary Chinese have to air their grievances," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "By using violence to squelch grievances, the authorities are effectively closing off some of the only political space in the country."

The number of petitions submitted has exploded in the past year, reflecting mounting discontent about the police, government corruption, environmental problems, workplace conditions and land disputes. In Beijing, the number nearly doubled in 2004 from 2003, the report says.

But the authorities appear to have responded to the surging dissatisfaction by suppressing the messengers, the authors of the report contend.

A government policy begun in May was nominally aimed at improving the efficiency of the petition system. The policy required petitioners to exhaust their options at the local level before appealing to Beijing, and put pressure on local officials to better resolve grievances.

But a crucial measure of success is the number of petitions received, providing a perverse incentive to prevent petitions from being filed rather than to resolve them.

A NYT arctle about the incident:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/international/asia/09cnd-china.html

20 Reported Killed as Chinese Unrest Escalates

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: December 9, 2005
SHANGHAI, Dec. 9 - Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by security forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That death toll remains unknown, but is estimated to be in the hundreds.

The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area in the wake of the heavily armed assault.

"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody.

"Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."

The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on rapid deployment of huge numbers of security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other non-lethal measures. But Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous in recent months over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside, particularly in heavily industrialized eastern provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiansu. By the government's tally there were 74,000 riots or other significant public disturbances in 2004, a big jump from previous years.

The villagers in Dongzhou said their dispute with the authorities had begun with a conflict over plans by a power company to build a coal-fired generator in their area, which they feared would cause heavy pollution. Farmers said they had not been compensated for the use of the land for the plant. Others said plans to reclaim land by filling in a local bay as part of the power plant project were unacceptable because people have made their livelihoods there as fishermen for generations. Already, villagers complained, work crews have been blasting a nearby mountainside for rubble for the landfill.

A small group of villagers was delegated to complain to the authorities about the plant in July, but they were arrested, infuriating other residents and encouraging others to join the protest movement. On Dec. 6, while villagers were mounting a sit-in demonstration, police made a number of arrests, bringing lots of people out into the streets, where they managed to detain several officers. In response, hundreds of law enforcement agents were rushed to the scene. Everybody, young and old, "went out to watch," said one man who claimed his cousin had been killed by a police officer's bullet in the forehead. "We didn't expect they were so evil. The farmers had no means to resist them."

Early reports from the village said the police opened fire only after villagers began throwing homemade bombs and other missiles, but villagers reached by telephone today denied this, saying that a few farmers had launched ordinary fireworks at the police as part of their protest. "Those were not bombs, they were fireworks, the kind that fly up into the sky," said one witness reached by telephone. "The organizers didn't have any money, so someone bought fireworks and placed them there. At the moment the trouble started many of the demonstrators were holding them, and of those who held fireworks, almost everyone was killed."

Other witnesses estimated that 10 people were killed immediately in the first volley of automatic gunfire. "I live not far from the scene, and I was running as fast as I could," said one witness, who declined to give his name. "I dragged one of the people they killed, a man in his 30's who was shot in his chest. Initially I thought he might survive, because he was still breathing, but he was panting heavily, and as soon as I pulled him aside, he died."

The witness said that he, too, had come under fire when the police saw him coming to the aid of the dying man. The Chinese government has yet to issue a statement about the incident, nor has it been reported in the state media. Reached by telephone, an official in the city of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over the village, said, "Yes, there was an incident, but we don't know the details." The official said an official announcement would be made on Saturday.

Villagers said that in addition to the regular security forces, the authorities had enlisted thugs from local organized crime groups to help put down the demonstration. "They had knives and sticks in their hands, and they were two or three layers thick, lining the road," one man said. "They stood in front of the armed police, and when the tear gas was launched, the thugs were all ducking."

Like the Dongzhou incident itself, most of the thousands of riots and public disturbances recorded in China this year have involved environmental, property rights and land use issues. Among other problems, in trying to come to grips with the growing rural unrest, the Chinese government is wrestling with a yawning gap in incomes between farmers and urban dwellers, and rampant corruption in local government, where unaccountable officials deal away communal property rights, often for their own profit.

Finally, mobile telephone technology has made it easier for people in rural China to organize, communicating news to one another by short messages, and increasingly allowing them to stay in touch with members of non-governmental organizations in big cities who are eager to advise them or provide legal help.

Over the last three days, residents of the village say that other than people looking for their missing relatives, few people have dared go outside. Meanwhile, the police and other security forces have reportedly combed the village house by house, looking for leaders of the demonstration and making arrests.

Residents said that after the villagers' demonstration was suppressed a senior Communist Party official came to the hamlet from the nearby city of Shanwei and addressed residents with a megaphone. "Shanwei and Dongzhou are still good friends," the party official said. "We're not here against you. We are here to make the construction of the Red Sea Bay better. Later, the official reportedly told visitors, "all of the families who have people who died must send a representative to the police for a solution."

Today, a group of 100 or so bereaved villagers gathered at a bridge leading into the town, briefly blocking access to security forces hoisting a white banner whose black-ink characters read: "The dead suffered a wrong. Uphold justice."

[Whoha]

explosives at a protest is a no-no.

[Dinner]

I do wonder if it is true. The Chinese government has lied so many times in the past about protests. This would hardly be the first time they completely made something up.

Still, if they did throw explosives at the cops then the cops were justified. I'm just not certain that really happened though.

[Arrian]

Yeah, I'm a little dubious, but if they did actually throw explosives at the cops... hey, they have the right to return fire.

-Arrian

[Berzerker]

eminent domain

[Joseph]

There is another story in today (12-9-05) SF Chronicle, page A25 about police killing 2 tobacco smuggler, were as in the past they just find them and took their tobacco.
This story happen in Shangdeng, China. The story said that then the villagers went to the Yantang City Hall, broke in and trash the place. When the party boss showed up, they knocked all of his front teeth out. He called for more police and when they show up, they were surrounded by several hundred villagers, so the police got back on their bus and left.

[Sava]

in a country of over a billion people... 20 deaths is considered a massacre?

[DanS]

Originally posted by Berzerker
eminent domain

That was my response exactly. Eminent domain gone wild amidst an emerging ownership society.

[Mao]

quote:
BEIJING, Dec. 8 - For centuries, Chinese with a grievance against the government have used an elaborate petition system in the hope, often in vain, of imperial redress.

But that ancient recourse is so abused by Chinese authorities today that petitioners seem as likely to be harassed, kidnapped, jailed or tortured as they are to have their complaints adjudicated by a higher authority, Human Rights Watch reported Thursday.

Ummm...IIRC, if you petitioned the imperial government, you'd likely be sentenced to death. This seems less harsh if anything. It's no excuse for the repression of course, but don't compare it to the imperial ways and then try to claim that China now is worse.

Some 10 million people filed petitions at the provincial and national level in 2004, the group said, citing Chinese statistics. But only 3 in 2,000, or about one-seventh of 1 percent, got a result they considered satisfactory.

Pretty sad, eh? Even sadder, I think that probability might still be better than imperial China haha.

[Mao]

Waitaminute...

The villagers in Dongzhou said their dispute with the authorities had begun with a conflict over plans by a power company to build a coal-fired generator in their area, which they feared would cause heavy pollution. Farmers said they had not been compensated for the use of the land for the plant. Others said plans to reclaim land by filling in a local bay as part of the power plant project were unacceptable because people have made their livelihoods there as fishermen for generations. Already, villagers complained, work crews have been blasting a nearby mountainside for rubble for the landfill.

The long-simmering conflict in Dongzhou arose over disputed confiscations and what farmers here said were inadequate compensation payments. Authorities exercising the equivalent of eminent domain seized farmers' fields to build a wind-driven electric generating plant on a hillside overlooking the village. The plant would be part of a $700 million electricity development project to supply the growing power needs of Shanwei and surrounding towns and villages.

So is this a wind-powered plant or a coal plant?

[Winston]

According to media reports today, hundreds of police have been brought to the area, and at least 30 people have been killed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, countries with an ounce of concern for human rights have to boycott the 2008 Olympics, anything less is a disgrace, plain and simple.