Chinese authorities come down hard on spreading protests
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2006
Yet, cars driving by every few minutes seem to filled with either plainclothes or uniformed police officers. Track down a resident, if you can find one in the eerily quiet streets, and that impression is confirmed. "You'd better be gone before dark," one man told a stranger. "Pretty soon the police will be everywhere, and no one will dare go outside."
In an immediate sense, this community in Guangdong Province, not long ago farmland and now the paved-over scene of runaway industrial sprawl, has experienced an extraordinary trauma in the past week. Villagers say a 13-year-old girl was killed, and now say another person died, as a result of the suppression of a local demonstration by police officers using electrified truncheons that resemble cattle prods.
Local officials say the demonstration was broken up without the use of tear gas, electrified truncheons or water canons, and that the girl died the day before the protest in a hospital.
Seen in another light, one that is likely deeply worrying for the Chinese authorities, Panlong is all too typical, merely the latest example of protests and riots spreading through the countryside against alleged injustices inflicted on those left behind by the Chinese economic takeoff.
Just as the protests are becoming more and more common, so is the use of overwhelming force to put them down. A major threshold was crossed early last month in the village of Dongzhou, about two hours from here by car, where residents estimate that as many as 30 people were killed by paramilitary security forces that opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators.
The Chinese government has said little about the events in Dongzhou, initially allowing the bare-bones account of the provincial authorities to stand, along with their verdict that the violence was started by the villagers and that three people died. However, the state media reported later that the commander of the police unit was arrested for "wrong actions" causing the deaths.
In a series of interviews Tuesday, people here made it clear that there was a broad awareness of the events in Dongzhou and of the fact that much of rural China is simmering with discontent. But they are fatalistic about their power to win redress for their grievances against the government.
"We live in this society and we just have to accept this reality," said a villager named Shen who, like several others who agreed to speak, gave only his family name, for fear of retribution from the authorities. "We have no land left. Our land has already been taken away with a compensation of only 700 yuan per person every year. They simply took away our land, and they can keep it 50 years." That 700 yuan is about $85.
The strands that come together in the trouble in Panlong, a village in the township of Sanjiao, are so typical of rural protests as to be very nearly generic.
People are dispossessed of their land to make way for industries or development projects. There are fruitless efforts to seek help from the government, from city hall to the provincial administration and all the way to Beijing. There is environmental destruction on a huge scale and the loss of long-reliable livelihoods.
When a spark ignites the people's discontent, local officials use police-state tactics to suppress the protests and enforce a silence over the details of the matter. Ultimately, there are brass knuckles, jail and, lately, death for those who refuse to take the hint and desist.
"People here have tried everything you can think of to get the problem solved before this happened," said a resident who gave his name as Chen. "They talked to the village committee, the township and municipal governments. One of them even went to Beijing. But nothing is done - the village officials just simply ignore them."
Chen described the peak of the demonstrations, Saturday night, when the deaths are said to have occurred. "It was like a war, so real and so brutal," he said. "I did not see who started it, but I saw policemen were beating the villagers and the villagers were fighting back with stones and firecrackers."
Villagers say many residents are being forced to report each morning to the police, who detain them until late in the evening, when they are allowed to return home until the next morning.
As with so many recent rural protests, Panlong's problems began with land. Many villagers told stories of having been deceived by corrupt local officials who they said had enriched themselves by selling off rights to the villagers' farmland.
"Two years back, one day, some villagers were asked to attend a routine meeting," said a 42-year-old farmer who gave his name as Fang. "They went and they paid 10 yuan for participation fees, and they signed in as usual. Later, when we discovered our land was being sold, we asked the village committee to explain what's going on, and they answered that we had signed the contract. Suddenly we remembered that meeting, and everyone understood that we had already been cheated."
Although there have been small-scale protests over land issues going back to the early 1990s, villagers said trouble broke out in earnest early last week after a widely publicized speech by the Communist Party secretary for Guangdong Province, Zhang Dejiang. He said land issues must be resolved equitably.
Brandishing the party secretary's words, villagers began a sit-in and later obstructed traffic, demanding that the matter of compensation for land they had surrendered be reopened. A particular focal point for the protests was the Minsen garment factory, the land for which villagers said had been acquired through corrupt deals with local political figures.
"The Sanjiao town area is the darkest place I had ever been to, although it is one of the richest places in the country," said one man, who spoke bitterly about the construction of palatial homes by officials enriching themselves through land deals.
"I'm a son of a senior government official," the man added. "I'm actually risking too much to meet you. I could just shut up and have a happy life, but we've got to do something so the next generations have a better and cleaner place to live."
Jail terms for 2 journalists
Two journalists in eastern China were sentenced to up to 10 years in jail for publishing an unauthorized magazine that exposed local land disputes, a court official said Wednesday, according to an Agence France-Presse report from Beijing.
The two, Zhu Wangxiang and Wu Zheng, were convicted by the Liandu District Court in Lishui, Zhejiang Province, on Tuesday for publishing the magazine, New China Youth, without having the approval of the media authorities, a court official said.
A third person was sentenced to one year in jail. The person and the charges were not identified.