chinascripts

Shanwei shoot up

Blackouts happen frequently in China's boom towns... lacking the energy to sustain their rapid growth.
(screen is black) (fast shots of crane and power chimney and boom town feel)

This power plant was meant to be part of the solution...
(power plant pic)

Canton province claims it would be the biggest in Asia.
(Chinese website with cheque)

Total investment clocks at 20 million pounds. Including an indirect loan from the World Bank.
( to World Bank website)


The power plant press hype, doesn't mention the 20,000 villagers whose land has been built on and whose bay polluted by this power station.
(english Power plant website) - pics

Those villagers were promised a tiny amount of compensation by local officials but money never came. They were obstructed by the authorities from taking legal action. So they began to use their bodies to block the gates to the plant and stopped the factory's production for the last few weeks.
(protest stills)

As China refashions its landscape, land disputes have become increasingly common. 74,000 rural protests were counted in 2004. (coutnry giving way to city from bus to airport)

Last week Tuesday 6th December at the call of a gong ten thousand villagers staged a protest. As night descended the paramilitary opened fire. Each side claims it was the other that began the violence. The events of the night are unclear but somewhere between three and twenty villagers were shot dead leaving 8 injured by the bullets of army machine guns. (Photos and camera).

---

The government made a statement saying that the incident was mishandled by the paramilitary and the commander who ordered the shooting had been detained. (police in airport)

But an atmosphere of terror still hung over the villagers I speak to on the phone from Beijing. I set off for Shanwei to find out why. (airport)

Apart from a couple of reports there has been a tight lid on the media over the incident. Most of the people on this plane have no idea that it took place. (newspapers – people sleeping)

On the bus from the airport I call some of the villagers. Police are hawking the area and they are not sure how I will be able to get in. (bus wide – me on the phone – PTCs)

The next day when we tried to get into the village we were stopped at a roadblock. The police didn't understand the English written on my passport or find my visa which says I am a journalist.
HONG KONG


Had I been found out, the likelihood is that I would still be being interrogated. GRAPHIC

But after an hour they let us turn back.
(roadblock, in taxi,

A villager then agreed to meet us in a town 50 km away. On his way out of the village he was searched.

He was worried I was not a journalist, but an official trying to trick him.

He asked me to get on the back of a motorcycle taxi and give the phone to the driver.

I find him at last in a small yard

"We are in a crisis. We cannot find safety. Everyone stays at home, afraid to come out. We don't have any protection. If anyone found out I am revealing this little to you, the police would arrest me and if they don't beat me to death they will lock me up"

"Around 69 people have been arrested so far. In the evenings police come to the village, they identify the people who are good at talking and take them away.

The law doesn't work here any more. We need the central government to come - if they don't come there is no solution. We need them to come to save us."

Lawyer Zhang Chengmao told me that the villager's appeal to the central government comes from an ancient Chinese political idea where people believe that a benevolent leader at the top, will shade them from petty corruption at local levels.

"This situation has emerged from a conflict of economic interests and corruption. It is terrible that blood has been shed. if we don't learn from this, i am afraid we might see more incidents like this. We need to learn the system needs to change - at the moment there is inequality between villagers and officials. We need a system where there is more democracy."

But it seems little is being learnt. In this village just a few miles from Dongzhou these people have no idea about what happened.

The World Bank credits China with bringing 400 million people out of poverty. but often there seems to be a disconnect between the new wealth generated by China's development and real respect for the lives of people in China's countryside. (plastic sheeting)

Dawn on Tiananmen Square. The flag raising ceremony. A daily rite of passage. Many of the pilgrims come from small towns and villages around China... proud of their country's economic transformation.

“The Heavens are High and the Emperor is Far away”, an old Chinese saying refers to the freedom from close central rule enjoyed by people far from the capital. Now it is an excuse to get Beijing off the hook for atrocities committed within its country.

To date, no one from the central government has been down to speak to the villagers of Dongzhou. Perhaps they are embarrassed - this sort of thing shouldn't happen in modern day China.

Or perhaps China is just too big for the central government to control?

Whatever the case, the residents of Dongzhou still grieve their dead, and still wait for justice to come.

posted by poppy @ 3:45 PM