At around 4:30 AM Saturday, over 200 young men, dressed in
uniforms and wearing construction hard-hats, and armed with hunting
rifles, swords, sharpened pipes, rods and fire extinguishers,
attacked farmers living in huts built on a piece of forsaken land
near Shengyou Village in the south of Dingzhou City, Hebei
Province. Six farmers were killed in the attack, 48 others
injured and hospitalized, eight of whom are in critical condition,
farmers told Beijing News on Sunday afternoon.
Officials with the publicity department of the Dingzhou
municipal?Party committee said that the Baoding municipal
government, which has jurisdiction over Dingzhou, has set up a
special group to investigate the incident. The group is headed by
the secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of
the Baoding municipal Party committee.
Farmers told Beijng News: "On the dawn of Saturday,
over 200 people jumped off five buses, assaulted the farmers and
smashed the huts."
"A guy was shooting at us with a double-barreled hunting rifle,"
said farmer Niu Zhenzong, who saw his fellow villager Hou Tongshun
being shot.
Farmer Huang Jinfeng, said with a swollen right eye that the
attackers attacked everybody they came across. She was hit in the
face with a brick while she was trying to escape with other
villagers.
Others said they attempted to fight back with farm tools such as
shovels but had to give up because the attackers' weapons were much
more sophisticated.
The chaos was captured on video by one of the farmers.
The villagers said the attack lasted for over an hour before
police and ambulance services were called in. At about 9:00 AM, the
police and medical workers arrived and injured villagers were sent
to hospital. Most of the injured had already been taken to the
People's Hospital of Dingzhou and the Traditional Chinese Medicine
Hospital in the neighboring Xinle City even before the ambulances
arrived.
A similar incident occurred at the same place on April 20.
Villagers said that at about 2:30 AM on April 20, about 20
unidentified people attacked them with clubs. One of the attackers
was captured and imprisoned in a cellar.
The detained attacker, in his 20s, identified himself as Zhu
Xiaorui. He said he used to be a waiter in Beijing. A man called
Qiangzi invited him to come to Hebei and promised to pay him 100
yuan (US$12.08) for his services. Zhu said he and other attackers,
most of whom are unemployed, went to Hebei from Beijing by bus.
Niu Zhanzong and other Shengyou villagers said that the
attackers shouted "Zhu Xiaorui, where are you?" as they attacked
the village on Saturday morning.
On Sunday, the Beijing News was told by the People's
Hospital of Dingzhou that many attackers were also injured and
hospitalized on Saturday but left on Sunday.
The villagers said the Hebei Guohua Dingzhou Power Plant, a key
national project, requisitioned 387 mu (25.8 hectares) of
land from Shengyou Village in 2003. Dingzhou's?Land
Resources?Bureau said that compensation for each mu
(0.07 hectare) of land would be 15,480 yuan (US$662.12), which was
considered too low by villagers who asked to see the land
requisition contract and other official documents on the criteria
of compensation for requisitioned land.
Because their demands were not met, the villagers built huts on
the requisitioned land, thereby hindering construction of the power
plant.
A July 2004 report by Hebei Youth News said on April 5,
2004 the Guohua Dingzhou Power Co. issued a document to villagers
saying the plant had paid 59.29 million yuan (US$7.16 million) in
compensation for the 1,748 mu (116.53 hectares) of land it
requisitioned in Dingzhou.
The news report added that according to the director
of?Dingzhou's Land Resources Bureau, the 1,748 mu of
land was spread across 13 villages in two townships. Aside from the
fees turned over to government departments, the per-mu
compensation was about 15,000 yuan (US$1812), which every other
village, except Shengyou, accepted.
On Monday evening, Dingzhou TV reported that the Hebei
provincial Party committee had removed He Feng, secretary of the
Dingzhou municipal Party committee, and Guo Zhenguang, mayor of
Dingzhou, from their posts.
On Monday, the newly appointed acting mayor of Dingzhou visited
the villagers hospitalized at the People's Hospital of Dingzhou,
and vowed to commence thorough investigations into the incident,
promising severe punishment for the thugs.
Also on Monday, Shengyou villagers took their "hostage" Zhu
Xiaorui to the office of the villagers' committee to be locked up.
They also removed the bodies of four of their fellow villagers from
hospitals in Xinle City to the village committee, where the corpses
were preserved in ice along with that of Hou Tongshun.
Another body of a dead villager remains at the People's Hospital
of Dingzhou.
Beijing News also reported that one of the attackers
had died.
Under the guidance of the special investigations group, police
have held many rounds of talks with the villagers, asking them to
dismantle their huts they built, leave the place as well as release
their "hostage."
Villagers said they knew "it's not correct" to hold Zhu hostage
but they "don't have any other options." They said they had treated
Zhu "quite well," feeding him meat and eggs and letting him out of
the cellar once in a while.
Beijing News also reported that the Dingzhou municipal
government is determined to solve the land dispute in a proper
manner, and begin the construction of the cinder lot, already
delayed for two years, as soon as possible.
(Beijing News, translated for China.org.cn by Chen
Chao, June 14, 2005)