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psychodrew
Reacher
Joined: July 31, 2003
Posts: 236
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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 Posted:
Dec 09, 2005 - 09:52 AM |
 
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| Post subject: Riots turn deadly... |
Yikes! Is this a serious escalation in the rural unrest or a fluke?
Police Open Fire on Rioting Farmers, Fishermen in China
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 8, 2005; 10:33 AM
DONGZHOU, China, Dec. 8 -- Paramilitary police and anti-riot units here have opened fire with pistols and automatic rifles for the past two nights on rioting farmers and fishermen who have attacked them with gasoline bombs and explosive charges, according to residents of this small coastal village.
The sustained volleys of gunfire, unprecedented in a wave of peasant uprisings over the past two years in China, have killed between 10 and 20 villagers and injured more, residents said. The count was uncertain, they said, because a number of villagers have disappeared and it is not known for sure whether they were killed, wounded or driven into hiding.
The tough response by black-clad riot troops and People's Armed Police in camouflage fatigues deviated sharply from previous government tactics against the spreading unrest in Chinese villages and industrial suburbs. As far as is known, previous riots have all been put down with heavy use of truncheons and teargas, but without firearms.
This time, according to a villager who heard and saw what happened, police responded to the launching of explosives by firing repeatedly "very rapid bursts of gunfire" over a period of several hours Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Some villagers reported seeing the People's Armed Police carrying AK-47 assault rifles, one of the Chinese military's standard-issue weapons. There were no reports of violence Thursday night.
The villagers who rose up against land confiscations in Dongzhou, a community of 10,000 residents 14 miles southeast of Shanwei city, in Guangdong province near Hong Kong, also opened a new chapter -- the use of the homemade bottle bombs and explosive charges that local fishermen normally use to stun fish in the adjacent South China Sea. In previous riots, attacks against police were limited to pelting them with stones and bricks or setting fire to official vehicles.
The Communist Party and city administration of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over Dongzhou, held all-day meetings Thursday on the violence, officials said. The city spokesman, however, refused to discuss what happened in the village and also declined to give his name. He said only that local authorities were taking the crisis seriously.
There likewise was no public response from the Guangdong provincial Communist Party and government, which have been hit by several long-running and violent confrontations over land confiscations during the past year. As was the case in most previous unrest, the government-censored press and television has not reported on the violence in Dongzhou.
Police set up a roadblock at the edge of the village, blocking most vehicles from entering or leaving, and white Public Security vehicles patrolled the main road linking Dongzhou with Shanwei. Pedestrians and motorcycles were allowed to pass in and out of the village, however, and buses waited for passengers just outside the checkpoint.
About 700 yards down the main street, about 100 villagers glared Thursday afternoon at a force of approximately 300 riot police, wearing helmets and carrying shields and batons, while an officer using an electric loudspeaker urged residents repeatedly to stay in their homes.
"This has nothing to do with you," he blared. "Return to your houses."
The long-simmering conflict in Dongzhou arose over disputed confiscations and what farmers here said were inadequate compensation payments. Authorities exercising the equivalent of eminent domain seized farmers' fields to build a wind-driven electric generating plant on a hillside overlooking the village. The plant would be part of a $700 million electricity development project to supply the growing power needs of Shanwei and surrounding towns and villages.
Villagers, contacted by telephone, complained that the compensation was inadequate. Moreover, they charged, the power plant would spoil fishing in Baisha Lake, a tidal inlet just below the hill on which villagers rely for seafood.
The confrontation was typical of the tension across China between economic development, which runs about 9 percent a year, and farmers' desire to retain the land that they regard as security for their families. The tension is particularly acute here in Guangdong province and the Pearl River Delta, where during the past two decades of economic liberalization, factories and dormitories have steadily eaten away at the rice paddies, corn fields and fruit orchards that used to flourish in the warm, wet climate.
For most of this year, Dongzhou villagers have been protesting on and off against the power plant project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2007 but now delayed. One prοtest leader, surnamed Huang, was arrested in July.
"It is illegal to impede the progress of a key infrastructure project," a Shanwei spokesman, Li Min, told Radio Free Asia then. "As for whether the compensation is reasonable, it was in line with the usual standards."
The villagers, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the current round of violence was set off when authorities arrested three village leaders who had gone to the hillside plant site Tuesday afternoon to lodge a complaint. Before long, they said, several thousand villagers gathered on the hilltop to demand their release.
Those villagers were dispersed by volleys of teargas fired by police, residents said. But shortly afterward, authorities dispatched between 400 and 500 more riot police into the village as reinforcements, the residents said. That contingent was met by several thousand angry villagers, they added, and police again resorted to teargas about dusk. This time, however, some villagers reacted by pelting police with the explosives, according to witnesses, and the police responded with sustained pistol and automatic weapons fire over the following three hours.
A similar confrontation occurred Wednesday evening on the main village road, leading to more attacks with gasoline bombs and several more hours of shooting, the villagers said. "The police kept on shooting until they drove away all the villagers," said a witness.
In the absence of official information from the government or Dongzhou hospital, reports flew from family to family of villagers killed, bodies burned and relatives unable to retrieve their slain loved ones left lying in the street. Some said 20 villagers were killed each night; others said the total was 14.
"I saw the bodies lying there," said one witness to Tuesday night's violence. "The family members were afraid to go and get them."
One villager, Liu Yujing, 31, said his younger brother, Liu Yudui, 26, was hit by two rounds, one in the heart and one in the bladder, immediately after he stepped outside the family home to see what was going on in the street Tuesday evening. "He died before we could get him to the hospital," Liu said.
Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report. |
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Magnolia
Board Biatch
Joined: June 01, 2004
Posts: 30388
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Dec 09, 2005 - 10:40 AM |
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The whole thing sounds messy.
But what did the people expect the police to do after being assaulted with gasoline bombs and explosives? The use of tear gas beforehand is usually used to demobilize any gatherings or individual without lasting damage. It's not as though the police started with gun fire.
Still sad for anyone involved or affected by it. Villagers and police. Why can't things be worked out to the satisfaction of all parties before they escalate into such messes? |
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You always won everytime you placed a bet |
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bravojohnny
Raver
Joined: July 08, 2004
Posts: 496
Status: Offline
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Dec 09, 2005 - 07:13 PM |
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they dont care? Gets them to be upset enough as it is!!! Would you like to move your whole family??? |
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Nick-la
Wonder Wit
Joined: July 19, 2003
Posts: 3675
Location: Wasted on this site
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Dec 09, 2005 - 08:23 PM |
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Chinese militia open fire on demonstrators opposing coal plant
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Friday December 9, 2005
The Guardian
In one of the most violent confrontations in a wave of recent rural unrest, Chinese paramilitary forces have shot and killed at least one man and injured more than a dozen others during prοtests against a power plant in Guangdong, local residents said yesterday.
Police reportedly used tear gas on a crowd of several thousand demonstrators, some of whom were said to have been throwing Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs. The death toll from the riot, in Dongzhou village on Tuesday evening, could rise. Local authorities refused to provide details of casualties but reports in the Hong Kong and overseas media suggest up to 15 people may have been killed.
Article continues
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A witness, who only gave her surname, Huang, told the Guardian that a former schoolmate, Lin Yutui, was among the dead. "We didn't expect the police would hurt us so when they fired warning shots in the air, nobody dispersed. Even when they used tear gas, people wouldn't withdraw. So then they used real bullets. I saw people get shot."
After her father was hit in the face by a tear-gas canister, Huang took him to a clinic where she described scenes of grief and chaos. She said the head of the clinic was imploring the biggest nearby hospital, in Shanwei, to send help. A member of staff at the Shanwei municipal hospital confirmed that wounded people had been brought in on Tuesday.
Several Hong Kong media groups said the deaths and wounds were caused by tear-gas canisters being fired at close range. But Mr Lin's family was quoted as telling the South China Morning Post that he had been killed instantly by two bullets, one to the heart and one to the pelvis.
Another witness, Liu, said: "I guess there were about 10-20,000 locals and more than 1,000 police, including militia. The police used rubber bullets first, then villagers threw petrol bombs and pipe bombs at them, so the police used some kind of machine gun ... I heard from others that three people were killed."
Branches of the public security bureau were not answering phones, and the mainland media were ordered not to report the incident.
The level of the violence this week had been unusual, but prοtests are becoming common. According to central government, 3.6 million people took part in 74,000 "mass incidents" last year, an increase of more than 20% on 2003. As in Dongzhou, most of these demonstrations were about property and pollution.
Dongzhou's villagers oppose the construction of a coal-fired power plant partly on land reclaimed from the nearby Baisha saltwater lake. Although construction of the 6.2bn yuan (£440m) development began in 2003, residents say they have not been compensated for lost income and land or the likely deterioration in the air and water quality. For the past two months, they have blocked the road into the construction site.
Tuesday's violent escalation was sparked by the arrest of the campaign's leaders. According to the AFP news agency, hundreds of officers from the People's Armed Police, a unit of the People's Liberation Army, attended the scene. The developer denied any involvement. |
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I'm surrounded by idiots. |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 09, 2005 - 11:27 PM |
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What about pumping 9 rounds of lead into a "suspect's" restrained head, trying to hide information from the public, hiding evidence from an independent commission, and using every possible tactic of deception to try to avoid to apologize for a gross mistake? Oh, wait, the guy's Visa was expired, so I guess that's alright isn't it?
What about using white phosphorus as a weapon in Iraq?
And I am not saying that because the guy is brazilian, I could not care less, but the fact is: how many suspects are not murdered this way without the public knowing about all in the name of "terrorism" ?
Recent times?
The US was dropping fu-king napalm in villages 30 years ago son. Is that recent enough for you? Guantanamo? Jose Paddilla? Ever heard about him?
What about Bae Systems paying Pinochet millions of dollars?
It's the usual double fu-king standard of the little hypocrite society that we live in.
I laugh my ass off.
People typing shiat with a straight face hahahahaah. Too much ignorance.
Like they say: the worse kind of blind is the one that does not want to see.
Whatever... |
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rgeczi8
Reacher
Joined: July 23, 2005
Posts: 306
Location: Hefei
Status: Offline
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Dec 10, 2005 - 04:16 PM |
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Maoming Master...I don't see your point. There are people dead due to police violence. There are injustices all over the world. This is a Chinese problem that we are talking in this thread. There are other countries that have their own problems, of course. But why don't we just stick to the topic of the thread.
These poor farmers are getting spat on by government, in terms of the pay they should receive for their land, and people don't expect them to get a little peeved? They have worked hard, and their ancestors have worked hard to get to where they are now, the last thing they will do is just roll over and play dead. They will fight for what they believe is their right.
I hope more of this kind of news can be broadcast on tv. Make things more visible to the public. |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 10, 2005 - 05:06 PM |
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I don't see the point of my post either.
Maybe you should ask Henry Chinaski - he knows a lot about this kind of stuff.... |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 10, 2005 - 05:11 PM |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051210/wl_afp/chinaunrest
Children making phone calls begging for help?? WTF??
Some reports are saying this could be worse than Tiannemen Square.
What with Bird Flu (and the following cover up), Jilin chemical spill (and the following cover up) and this it looks like 2006 could be a really shitty year for China.
Oh well.... |
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shanghaiceltic
Board Royalty
Joined: Sep 20, 2005
Posts: 7149
Location: Perth WA
Status: Offline
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Dec 11, 2005 - 08:47 AM |
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2006: Year of the Dog, appropriate for those at the bottom of the pile leading a dogs life.
What is disturbing is the htwoing of pipe and petrol bombs. The article states that pipe bombs wer used for stunning fish, therefore they were available already, but using petrol bombs hints at organization as they have to be prepared. |
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I have parrallel bars at home, one for gin and one for whiskey |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 11, 2005 - 10:51 AM |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051210/wl_asia_afp/chinaunrest
Well, the Chinese government/police (sorry, I find it increasingly hard to make a distinction these days) have confessed to peasants being killed during the prοtests but nowhere near the number that the peasants say.
Ignore history and your are sure to repeat it.
For China that means another Tiannemen Square.
I reckon 2006 will be an Annus Horribilis for Hu Jin Tao. |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 11, 2005 - 12:28 PM |
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The official who gave the order for security forces to open fire on a group of demonstrators in southern China last week, which state press says claimed the lives of at least three people, has been arrested.
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Very reassuring..... As reassuring as the sacking of Beijing's mayor and the government official for health during the Sars cover up.
Whatever....... |
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maodaman
Barker
Joined: Nov 30, 2005
Posts: 183
Location: maotown
Status: Offline
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Dec 12, 2005 - 09:56 AM |
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compare to American cops, Chinese policemen are way to soft on criminals. in US, when people are stopped/questioned by cop, he/she better be really coorprative, any type of resistance will face arrest, sometimes even get a bullet.
also regarding to this particular case, Land belongs to gov't in China, and gov't HAS right to use it anyway it please. so those peasants are nothing but assholes and they should be punished.
I also heard that they attacked police first with self made weapons, can you imagine what will they get in US? homeland security/FBI/National Guard, you name it, will shove anything they have up to their asses. remember WACO, Taxes? |
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psychodrew
Reacher
Joined: July 31, 2003
Posts: 236
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Dec 12, 2005 - 12:59 PM |
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The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the peasants had not thrown any pipe bombs or molitov cocktails. Apparently, they only set off from fireworks. Of course, it will be impossible to know the truth for certain.
The land is owned by the government and it can do what it pleases. That is certainly true, but it doesn't make it right. Depriving poor people of their livelihood without compensation so rich fat commie can get richer and fatter may be legal, but it's certainly not fair. And before you go on another anti-American tirade, you need to acknolowedge that at least American farmers would be able to fight this kind of decision in a court of law, and for that matter, a court of public opinion.
Certainly, American police officers have killed prοtesters. It's EXTREMELY rare, but it does happen. When it does happen, it receives wide coverage in the press, the people that are responsible are punished, and the families can seek adequate compensation. Yes, Americans make mistakes, but don't even try to compare the America justice system with the corrupt joke of a legal code you have in China. |
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bus3
Rocker
Joined: July 25, 2004
Posts: 635
Location: Shanghai
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Dec 12, 2005 - 01:24 PM |
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Psychdrew, I agree with you that there is no compaison between the US system of justice and China, but lest we forget, the US Supreme Court recently ruled that it is ok for a government body to take land from one private owner and give it to another. |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 12, 2005 - 01:49 PM |
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^ Really? Can you provide a link for us to read? |
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bravojohnny
Raver
Joined: July 08, 2004
Posts: 496
Status: Offline
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Dec 12, 2005 - 02:12 PM |
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Guess you guys havn't heard the really recent news in Hong Kong's mass demonstrations |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 12, 2005 - 06:21 PM |
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Print it here.
Comparisons are being made between the recent police shootings and Tiannemen Square. Amnesty International are getting all hot and bothered about it. The Chinese government are desperately looking for more people to take the blame. |
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psychodrew
Reacher
Joined: July 31, 2003
Posts: 236
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Dec 13, 2005 - 09:07 AM |
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You're absolutely correct, bus3. The government can do that. But the person or persons who lose their property are entitled to fight the decision in a court of law where the state must demonstrate a compelling interest and the property owner(s) must receive fair and adequate compensation. There's absolutely no comparison to what is happening in China.
I wonder what will happen to all these Chinese businessmen when (if) China opens the door to more foreign competition. How are the Chinese going to compete with foreign companies that succeed by being the best when they've always been able to rely on corruption? |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 13, 2005 - 09:34 AM |
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Hey it's alright lads. Calm down. The killings in the village were 'mistakes'. It says so here:
CHINA: Protesting villagers killed 'by mistake'
Xinhua publishes formal account of night riot in Dongzhou village of Guangdong
South China Morning Post
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Three Guangdong villagers were killed by mistake and eight injured because a hard core of prοtesters incited a "chaotic" nighttime riot that required police to fire warning shots, the mainland's official media said last night.
In the first formal account of violent clashes between police and villagers in Dongzhou village, Shanwei city, Xinhua last night published a local government statement. Entitled "The Truth of December 6th Incident of Red Sea Bay in Shanwei", it called the confrontation "a case of serious violence against the people's police by several hundred villagers instigated by a small number of people".
"The December 6th Incident is a serious crime instigated by a small number of people," it said. "A very small number of instigators in Dongzhou... are the main culprits. They must shoulder the legal responsibility of the serious consequence of what's happened."
Villagers last night reacted to the statement with anger and concern. Some feared further arrests and others said the death toll was higher and complained police had yet to return the bodies of their missing relatives. The situation was last night tense in the village.
The statement did not say how the villagers died or were injured, only describing the situation last Tuesday as "very chaotic."
It said police fired warning shots to disperse prοtesters but were unsuccessful. "It was already dark and the situation was very chaotic," the statement said. "As a result, people were killed or injured by mistake."
Three villagers were killed, eight were injured and all were from Dongzhou, it said. "After police found the wounded victims, they were quickly sent to hospital for treatment," it said. The cause of death was being investigated.
The statement did not specify if the "instigators" had been arrested. But a local television broadcast last night said eight suspects were in custody, including the three main organisers, identified as Huang Xijun, Huang Xirang and Lin Hanru.
The trio had tried to mobilise villagers in neighbouring Shigongzhai. They had hoped to pressure the Dongzhou government to award more compensation for a coal-fired plant to be built in their own village.
It was hoped the prοtests at the Shigongzhai plant would pressure officials to offer Dongzhou's villagers more compensation for land acquired to build the coal plant.
The statement said the Shigongzhai plant was forced to suspend power generation for seven hours last Monday during an attack. The next day prοtesters set fire to the plant until police drove them off with tear gas.
Later, the three main instigators gathered more than 500 villagers and confronted policemen sent to restore order in Shigongzhai and neighbouring areas, the statement said. The prοtesters were armed with bombs, spades and knifes and set up barricades. |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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Dec 13, 2005 - 09:45 AM |
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CHINA: Media muted on Shanwei incident
Reports of prοtest crackdown found in only three regional publications, other media outlets avoid coverage
South China Morning Post
Monday, December 12, 2005
By Jane Cai
Reports on the detention of the police commander who led the crackdown on prοtesters in Dong-zhou village, Shanwei, were carried in only three Guangdong newspapers yesterday.
The Guangzhou Daily, the Nanfang Daily and the Yangcheng Evening News all carried the same report -- apparently directly issued by provincial authorities -- on the alleged accident that officials said left three villagers dead and eight injured.
The report, headlined "Serious anti-law incident takes place in Red Sea Bay Development Zone of Shanwei city" said residents of Dongzhou urged villagers from nearby Shigongliao to join them in a prοtest for increased compensation for their seized land.
Xinhua's report, headlined "The truth of the December 6 Incident of Red Sea Bay in Shanwei", said villagers believed their fung shui would be affected by a wind-power farm being built on the land.
"The incident is a serious crime instigated by a small number of people," the report said. "A very small number of instigators are the main culprits. They must shoulder the legal responsibility of the serious consequence of what has happened."
Newspapers elsewhere -- including those based in Beijing -- did not mention the incident, suggesting that central authorities wanted to play down the story and minimise its negative impact.
The three newspapers are generally less popular than tabloids such as Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis News, which has not reported on the police crackdown.
Although the report was basically identical to a statement released by the Shanwei government on Saturday and carried by Xinhua the same day, it contained the only admission so far that the commander "mishandled the situation", resulting in casualties.
The statement made no mention of any police officers being detained over the confrontation, saying only that an investigation was continuing.
Internet discussions on the incident were also censored.
On the popular chat room KDNET's Mao Yan Kan Ren forum, one netizen posted a message yesterday afternoon containing a link to the Guangzhou Daily report, adding a note urging the chat room administrator not to delete it. But the message soon disappeared.
Other popular portals such as Sohu and Sina did not carry reports on the incident yesterday. |
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bleucheese
Veejay
Joined: Aug 01, 2003
Posts: 1974
Location: this side of the tracks
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Dec 14, 2005 - 09:08 AM |
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One week later and its still quiet.
[url]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/international/asia/13cnd-china.html? hp&ex=1134536400&en=e81e23cb6bc01f21&ei=5094&partner=homepage[/url]
China Suppresses News of Violent Crackdown on Demonstration
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: December 13, 2005
SHANGHAI, Dec. 13 - One week after the police violently suppressed a demonstration against the construction of a power plant in China, leaving as many as 20 people dead, an overwhelming majority of the Chinese public still knows nothing of the event.
In the wake of the biggest use of armed force against civilians since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Chinese officials have used a variety of techniques to prevent news of the deaths from spreading - like barring reports in most newspapers outside the immediate region and banning place names and other keywords associated with the event from major Internet search engines, like Google.
Beijing's handling of news about the incident, which was widely reported internationally, provides an unusually revealing picture of the government's ambitions to control the flow of information to its people, and of the increasingly sophisticated techniques - a combination of old-fashioned authoritarian methods and the latest Internet technologies - that it uses to keep people in the dark.
The government's first response was to impose a news blackout, apparently banning the Chinese news media of all types from reporting the Dec. 6 confrontation. It was not until Saturday, four days later, with foreign news reports proliferating and growing in detail, that the official New China News Agency released the first Chinese account.
According to that report, more than 300 armed villagers in the southern town of Dongzhou "assaulted the police." Only two-thirds of the way into the press agency's article was it mentioned that three villagers had been killed and eight others injured when "the police were forced to open fire in alarm."
But even that account was not widely circulated, and it was highly at odds with the stories told by villagers, who in several days of often detailed interviews insisted that 20 or more people had been killed by automatic weapons fire and that at least 40 were still missing.
The government's version, like a report the next day in which the authorities announced the arrest of a commander who had been in charge of the police crackdown, was largely restricted to newspapers in Guangdong Province and was not broadcast elsewhere.
"The Central Propaganda Department must have instructed the media who can report this news and who cannot," said Yu Guoming, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University in Beijing. "It's all been centrally arranged. Certainly the New China News Agency Web site only posted the story after receiving instructions from the propaganda department."
The government's handling of information about the violence has drawn sharp criticism from a group of prominent intellectuals, more than 50 of whom have signed a statement condemning what they called the "crude censorship by the mainland media of any reporting of the Dongzhou incident." Word of the petition has circulated online, but it has not been published in China.
Not one among several of China's leading editors interviewed on the subject acknowledged receiving instructions from the government on how or whether to report on the deaths of prοtesters, but in each case their answers hinted at constraints and unease.
"We don't have this news on our Web site," said Fang Sanwen, the news director of Netease.com, one of China's three major Internet portals and news providers. "I can't speak. I hope you can understand."
"I'm not the right person to answer this question," said Li Shanyou, editor in chief of Sohu.com, another of the leading portals. "It's not very convenient to comment on this."
On Sina.com, the third of the leading portals and the only one to carry even a headline about the incident, a link to news from Dongzhou was a dead end, leading to a story about employment among college graduates.
Even Caijing, a magazine with a strong reputation for enterprising reporting on delicate topics, demurred. "We just had an annual meeting, and I haven't considered this subject yet," said Hu Xuli, the magazine's editor, speaking through an assistant.
Further obscuring news of the events at Dongzhou, online reports about the village incident carried by the New China News Agency were confined to its Guangdong provincial news page and were not listed as national news stories or highlighted among the day's headlines.
The result of that placement is that few who did not already know of the news or were not searching determinedly for information about it would have been likely to stumble across it on China's leading official news Web site.
The government also arranged more technologically impressive measures to frustrate those who sought out news of the confrontation.
Until today, Web users who turned to search engines like Google and typed in the word Shanwei, the city with jurisdiction over the village where the demonstration was put down, would find nothing about the prοtests against power plant construction there, or about the crackdown.
After a few screens of information unrelated to the incident, users who continued to search found their browsers freezing. By today, links to foreign news sources appeared after several screens of Google searches, but the links were invariably inoperative.
But controls like these have spurred a lively commentary among China's fast-growing blogging community, alternately deeply cynical and mournful.
"The domestic news-blocking system is really interesting," wrote one blogger. "I heard something happened in Shanwei and wanted to find out whether it was true or just the invention of a few people. So I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn't do any searches - not even on the Three Represents."
Baidu is one of the leading search engines in China, and the Three Represents is the ideology developed by the former national leader Jiang Zemin.
"I don't dare to talk," another blogger wrote. "There are sensitive words everywhere - our motherland is so sensitive. China's body is covered with sensitive zones." |
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MaomingMaster
Board Legend
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059
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| Posted:
Dec 14, 2005 - 12:20 PM |
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Apparently a guy from Shanghai was murdered by the Chinese cops while going to a wedding in the village.
Of course no news about this in the Chinese press.
I can't wait for the shiit to REALLY hit the fan about this!! |
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