A dispute, which occurred
this summer in Taishi Village, Yuwotou Township, Panyu District of
Guangzhou but whose truth has remained unclear, has drawn
nationwide attention. A spokesperson for the Panyu district
government answered questions October 15 from Guangzhou-based
southcn.com concerning this situation.
Q: How did the Taishi Village incident
happen? And what?did the local government?do when dealing
with it?
A: Liang Shusheng was elected this May head
of the No.7 group in Taishi Village. Villagers asked Liang to
fulfill the promise he made before the election that if he were
elected, he would give each villager 10,000 yuan (US$1,233) and a
piece of land for house-building. Therefore, Liang asked repeatedly
the villagers' committee, which was reelected in mid-April, to hand
out the compensation for requisitioned land. However, his request
was refused as it's against the relevant policies. Liang then asked
the committee to give each villager a compensation of 103 yuan
(US$12.7) for "hard labor" but was once again rejected.
A piqued Liang claimed that the villagers'
committee practiced bribery at the election. He also reproached the
last committee for "illegally reselling land" and "keeping secret
the expenditure of the money from it." Since late July he colluded
with some villagers to recall Chen Jinsheng, the committee's
reelected chair, claiming that they had found "25 misbehaviors"
with the committee's members. Nevertheless, he didn't present the
petition signed by 892 villagers to Panyu District's Bureau of
Civil Affairs until September. After verifying that 584 of the
signatures were effective, more than that needed for a recall
motion, the township government started procedures for a legal
recall vote on the committee's chair.
Unexpectedly, during that time under the excuse of
"protecting account books" about 100 villagers forcibly occupied
the office building of the villagers' committee, leading to the
breakdown of its daily functions. When the police tried to detain
some instigators on August 16, they were besieged for over two
hours by 150 villagers who were unaware of the truth.
The district and township governments have handled
the incident according to law to ensure the villagers' democratic
rights, while making known relevant laws and regulations among
them. Those "misbehaviors" listed on the petition have aroused the
attention of the district government, which sent out a task force
to conduct a financial audit in the village and investigate the
persons concerned. The audit and investigation results have been
published to the village's Party members, group heads and villager
representatives on September 20 and to over 500 villagers the
following day respectively.
Q: What were the audit and investigation
results?
A: According to the task force's
investigation, most of the "25 misbehaviors" of committee members
as raised by the villagers didn't exist at all. And the financial
audit shows that Taishi's revenues and expenditures are clear and
no individual has been found to use public office to seek personal
profit.
Q: The foreign media reported that violent
bloody conflict occurred on August 16 and September 12
respectively. What were the real scenes at that time? Did the
police behave uncouthly when dealing with them?
A: On the evening of August 3, about 100
villagers forcibly occupied the villagers' committee's office
building. The township government publicized related laws and
regulations among villagers at first. Then the public security
branch of Panyu District issued a public notice on August 13,
requiring villagers to abide by the law and withdraw from the
building. Three days later, the police detained six instigators. On
September 12, the police cleared the illegally occupied building.
Equipped only with protective outfit, they calmly handled some
villagers' excessive actions and four were wounded lightly. During
the process, the police performed their duty according to law and
no violence or bloody action by them as reported by foreign media
has ever been found.
Q: Overseas media recently reported that
several groups of foreign reporters were restricted, beaten up when
they gathered news and information in Taishi Village and that even
two people -- Guardian correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Walt and
Lü Banglie, deputy to People's Congress of Zhijiang City, Hubei
Province -- were beaten to death. What actually happened?
A: At about 8:40 PM on October 8, Lü
approached Taishi Village by taxi and took with him two foreign
men. They were intercepted near the Taishi Middle School by
villagers from the village, who then told Lü not to incite discord
there. The villagers said nobody would believe what he said and
asked Lü and his company to leave the village immediately. When Lü
and his company tried to force their way into the village, arguing,
pushing and pulling happened between the two sides.
At 8:50 PM policemen at Yuwotou Town's police
station were called by somebody and arrived at the spot shortly
after. They took the three to the township government's office
building out of security concerns for them. Consequent questioning
identified the two foreigners to be Guardian's resident
correspondent in Shanghai Benjamin Joffe-Walt and a staff
interpreter named Tang Guoye with a Shanghai-based translation
company. As the two were unable to show any credentials issued by
China's foreign affairs authorities to sanction their reporting in
the country, they were told that their reporting was illegal. The
township government then sent the two foreigners back to
Guangzhou's White Swan Hotel for their safety in a special car. The
two suffered no injury at all during the above process. That the
Guardian reporter was beaten was pure
rumor.
As Lü claimed injury, Yuwotou's policemen took him
immediately to the town's hospital for CT checkup. Doctors only
found slight scratch in his hands. Regarding Lü's capacity, related
staff contacted the standing committee of the People's Congress of
Zhijiang City, which responded through telephone at 10:41 PM and
entrusted the People's Congress of Panyu District with the task of
taking Lü back to Zhijiang.
Lü was escorted to Zhijiang at 7:30 PM on October
9. Zhijiang Municipal People's Congress Standing Committee
immediately took him to Bailizhou Town Hospital in Zhijiang for
medical checkup. He was taken to Zhijiang City People's Hospital
for further checkup on the following morning. Legal medical experts
of Zhijiang City's Bureau of Public Security were also on the scene
for appraisal and testimony.
Repeated checks in Zhijiang supported the diagnosis
made by the Yuwotou township hospital. Lü himself signed on the
checkup reports. That Lü was "beaten to death" in "bloodshed" is
purely fabricated and nonsensical.
Q: Has the economic and daily lives of
Taishi villagers returned to normal after the recall motion ceased
to be effective?
A: After the election committee of Taishi
Village announced that the original recall motion lost efficacy
automatically, most of the villagers accepted it calmly. The
investigations have been through, the legal items clarified and the
facts clear, so the recall motion was not backed as before. The
economic and daily lives of Taishi villagers have also resumed
their normal state.
(China.org.cn October 19, 2005)