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Land deal stand-off continues in China village
A plot of farmland in Guangji in Yunnan province is at the centre of the dispute
A stand-off is continuing a tiny hamlet in China's southern Yunnan province following a violent confrontation between villagers and police last week.
A few hundred residents of Guangji are surrounded by police eager to arrest those involved in the clashes.
Forty-four villagers and 27 police were hurt in the clashes, which began when police tried to arrest two villagers.
Wang Zhengrong, 69, and his son, Wang Chunyun are leading the village fight against a land deal.
The villagers are fighting to save their farm land from provincial developers who are building a $3.6bn dollar tourist attraction on the site.
Hundreds of people were involved in last week's battle, in which police used tear gas and unidentified explosives to subdue the villagers, who fought back with hoes, sickles and shoulder poles.
"Now the villagers are afraid that the government will come up with excuses to put us in jail. In most government land grab cases, lots of activists who want to protect their own land just disappear in the end," said Pu Yongfang, a village leader.
Mr Pu and the Wangs have spent months educating other people in the village about their legal rights to the farm land, making them prime targets for the police.
Map of Yunnan province
Elderly residents are able to pass the police lines to leave and return to the village at will, but younger generations who were involved in the altercation are afraid to pass by the police, villagers say.
Guangji is a 30-minute drive south of Yunnan's capital, Kunming. Twelve villages shared the farm land that is earmarked for the province's new "Ancient City" project, a vast recreation of traditional Chinese buildings dating back to Yunnan's ancient Dian Kingdom, which began in the 4th Century BC.
The project, which has high-level support from Yunnan's Communist Party leaders, is slated to cover approximately 20,000 acres, say the villagers.
Half of that land has already been claimed by the project's developers. The people in Guangji are fighting to protect 4000 acres of land that lies closest to their homes, while nearby villages are pitching in to try to save the rest. They too, have seen their share of violent confrontations with the authorities in recent months.
For now, the villagers face a difficult dilemma: stay in the village without access to medical care, or leave the village and risk arrest.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24739248
***********************************************************************
China has made great strides in industrialising, developing and beautifying its country.
There is no doubt that they deserve credit for the same.
But what is hidden from all, and of which our worthy Chinese posters tend to overlook or obfuscate, is the tremendous cost it has been achieved through the hardships of the common man and through gross human rights abuses.
The Chinese posters gloss over it but are quick to find and portray the shortcomings of India, forgetting that such draconian measures cannot be implemented with aplomb as it can be done in a totalitarian dictatorship as in China!
This incident is but an example of many that are occurring, but are never reported or even whispered about in China.
This is a repreentative case of landgrabbing by the State (i.e. China and the CCP) using the full might of the repressive govt machinery (police) with all the weapons at its disposal!
Not only will the legal rights of the land owners be perfunctorily overlooked and dismissed, but they will also be jailed on trumped up imaginative charges of misconduct and crime!
The Chinese posters here on the DFI are surely not those who have faced these draconian acts and possibly are the favoured Communist Party hacks on hire or ordered to do so under threats of dire consequences, and so they never let the world know of the world know of the seamier side of China, and when someone raises it, they go hammer and tongs peddling furiously the Chinese propaganda bilge water to confuse, obfuscate and divert!
A plot of farmland in Guangji in Yunnan province is at the centre of the dispute
A stand-off is continuing a tiny hamlet in China's southern Yunnan province following a violent confrontation between villagers and police last week.
A few hundred residents of Guangji are surrounded by police eager to arrest those involved in the clashes.
Forty-four villagers and 27 police were hurt in the clashes, which began when police tried to arrest two villagers.
Wang Zhengrong, 69, and his son, Wang Chunyun are leading the village fight against a land deal.
The villagers are fighting to save their farm land from provincial developers who are building a $3.6bn dollar tourist attraction on the site.
Hundreds of people were involved in last week's battle, in which police used tear gas and unidentified explosives to subdue the villagers, who fought back with hoes, sickles and shoulder poles.
"Now the villagers are afraid that the government will come up with excuses to put us in jail. In most government land grab cases, lots of activists who want to protect their own land just disappear in the end," said Pu Yongfang, a village leader.
Mr Pu and the Wangs have spent months educating other people in the village about their legal rights to the farm land, making them prime targets for the police.
Map of Yunnan province
Elderly residents are able to pass the police lines to leave and return to the village at will, but younger generations who were involved in the altercation are afraid to pass by the police, villagers say.
Guangji is a 30-minute drive south of Yunnan's capital, Kunming. Twelve villages shared the farm land that is earmarked for the province's new "Ancient City" project, a vast recreation of traditional Chinese buildings dating back to Yunnan's ancient Dian Kingdom, which began in the 4th Century BC.
The project, which has high-level support from Yunnan's Communist Party leaders, is slated to cover approximately 20,000 acres, say the villagers.
Half of that land has already been claimed by the project's developers. The people in Guangji are fighting to protect 4000 acres of land that lies closest to their homes, while nearby villages are pitching in to try to save the rest. They too, have seen their share of violent confrontations with the authorities in recent months.
For now, the villagers face a difficult dilemma: stay in the village without access to medical care, or leave the village and risk arrest.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24739248
***********************************************************************
China has made great strides in industrialising, developing and beautifying its country.
There is no doubt that they deserve credit for the same.
But what is hidden from all, and of which our worthy Chinese posters tend to overlook or obfuscate, is the tremendous cost it has been achieved through the hardships of the common man and through gross human rights abuses.
The Chinese posters gloss over it but are quick to find and portray the shortcomings of India, forgetting that such draconian measures cannot be implemented with aplomb as it can be done in a totalitarian dictatorship as in China!
This incident is but an example of many that are occurring, but are never reported or even whispered about in China.
This is a repreentative case of landgrabbing by the State (i.e. China and the CCP) using the full might of the repressive govt machinery (police) with all the weapons at its disposal!
Not only will the legal rights of the land owners be perfunctorily overlooked and dismissed, but they will also be jailed on trumped up imaginative charges of misconduct and crime!
The Chinese posters here on the DFI are surely not those who have faced these draconian acts and possibly are the favoured Communist Party hacks on hire or ordered to do so under threats of dire consequences, and so they never let the world know of the world know of the seamier side of China, and when someone raises it, they go hammer and tongs peddling furiously the Chinese propaganda bilge water to confuse, obfuscate and divert!
