2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 35 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Apr. 2008, people are continue quitting at a rate of 44,000 to 56,000 per day in April 2008.
- China: 35 Million Chinese Quit the Communist Party
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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The legal case that has grabbed the attention of ordinary people throughout China, in which on May 10 a waitress in China’s Hubei province allegedly killed a Communist official who she said was involved in a sexual assault on her, took a surprising turn last Sunday as the Chinese authorities described the killing in what might appear to be an exculpatory manner. Legal experts, though, say the charges against her remain unchanged.
The announcement, many believe, stems from the regime’s effort to appease the public during the run-up to the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4 and occurs at the same time as measures meant to silence discussion of this explosive topic.
According to a Xinhua news release of last Sunday, on May 10 the waitress Deng Yujiao at a karaoke-spa center, “was coerced by Huang Dezhi and Deng Guida to bathe with them.” When she refused, it was said, “she was violently pulled and pushed around [by the two officials] and was also verbally assaulted.”
Under such circumstances, says the news release, the waitress’s stabbing of the two officials, which killed one and injured the other, is considered by the police “excessive self-defense.”
According to bloggers, the decision is widely seen as the Chinese authority’s attempt to alleviate the widespread anger among the people, who believe that the authority is trying to cover up a rape or attempted rape by communist officials.
Another Version
The Sunday news release offers yet another official description of what happened in the incident, in addition to three different earlier versions of the story.
Earlier, the waitress reportedly was asked by the official Huang Dezhi to provide “special service” (meaning sexual service), which was then changed to “bathing service” (a young woman giving a man a bath). Last Sunday’s version says she was coerced to “bathe with them.”
Besides, the waitress, instead of being “held down [on a sofa]” or “pushed to sit [on a sofa],” as the earlier versions said, is now said to be violently pulled and pushed around while being verbally assaulted.
No rape or attempted rape is implicated in the Xinhua statement.
The news release also says that Huang Dezhi, vice-director of the Investment Office of the town Yesanguan, has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and stripped of all his offices because he breached Party rules through accepting his client’s dinner invitation and through forcing a waitress to bathe with him.
In addition, the third official, Deng Zhongjia, who earlier had been left out of the picture by the authorities because “he did nothing illegal,” is said to have been fired from his job for the “bad influence he may have in society.”…… (more details fromThe Epoch Times)
HONG KONG – Until recently, Deng Yujiao seemed an unlikely hero. The 21-year-old pedicurist worked in obscurity at the Xiongfeng Hotel in central Hubei province’s Badong county. The hotel’s Dream City leisure center is probably a euphemism for a brothel, but she was known only as a toenail cutter there until May 10.
On that night, she says she was assaulted by two government officials, one of whom slapped her repeatedly with wads of cash while insisting that she have sex with him. When the two men pushed her onto a sofa a second time, she recalls, she reached into her bag for a knife, an instrument she used in her trade, and began slashing away.
One of the officials, Deng Guida, the 44-year-old head of business promotion for the town of Yesanguan and the apparent would-be sex client, died from his wounds; his unnamed colleague, also 44, survived.
While there was little public sympathy for the dead man or his injured cohort, suddenly a previously unknown pedicurist working in a seedy hotel was being hailed by Chinese netizens as a champion of women’s rights and hero of the underclass. Women’s groups, including the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, took up her cause, and even state media picked up her story, which has become a national sensation.
Until last week, that is, when the country’s censor tsar, jittery about public ire manifested in any form as the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches, decided to pull the plug.
“Hubei’s case concerning Deng Yujiao,” a gag order from the Central Publicity Department stated, “has been under judicial investigation in accordance with the law, and news organizations should halt following up the case temporarily and call back journalists working in Hubei immediately.”
Since the department issued this edict, two journalists – Kong Pu of the Beijing Times and Wei Yi of the Nangfang People Weekly – have reportedly been beaten and detained as they attempted to interview Deng Yujiao’s grandmother, and Yesanguan has been sealed off by local authorities……. ( More details fromAsia Times Online)
A Chinese food group at the centre of a contaminated milk scandal which killed six babies has been declared bankrupt with debts of $160m (£113m).
Sanlu, which had been one of China’s most trusted brands, was the first of 22 firms found to have sold the milk.
More than 300,000 children were made ill by the milk, to which melamine had been added to boost protein readings.
The chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, Tian Wenhua, has already been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Other Sanlu executives received sentences of five to 15 years. Two other men were sentenced to death.
But anger among the Chinese population was not only directed at Sanlu. As the scale of the deadly scam became known, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao gave a rare public apology for failing to prevent the crisis.
Chinese product safety regulators have now announced they are investigating whether a unit of the French Danone group also used the toxic chemical.
Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China
(cont’d)
Millions of Internet users renounce the (Communist) Party
While governments of Western countries, including Australia, still fail to appreciate how fragile the communist regime really is, more and more people in China are awakening from their previous delusions about the Party.
On the Internet, more than 44 million people have already publicly renounced the CCP and its related organisations, while many so-called ‘naked’ officials are busy transferring their money – and sending their wives and children – overseas in anticipation of having to leave the country in a hurry one day.
Official figures show that at least 4000 suspected corrupt officials have already fled China, taking with them more than five billion yuan ($1.1 billion), but it’s not only low-ranking officials who are leaving the country.
In 2005, Chen Yonglin, consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney, defected. This year two high-profile Party cadres, Xin Weiming, Deputy Head of Luwan District of Shanghai, and Yang Xianghong, Party Member Secretary of the Lucheng District of Wenzhou City, did likewise. They both disappeared while visiting France in October.
Many people, including a large proportion inside the CCP, no longer doubt that the Party boat is sinking. The question is, of course, how many more people must suffer prior to its ultimate demise? (End)
* Jennifer Zeng’s biography, Witnessing History – One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, is published by Allen & Unwin.
Chinese New Year is the gift season for businesses in China. A Nanjing toy manufacturer’s list of gifts to governmental officials was accidentally revealed to the public on December 27, 2008. T
he list showed that Jiashide Toys Products paid 144,800 Yuan (approximately US$ 21,198) as “gifts” to Chinese officials in 2007.
According to the manufacturer’s records, Jiashide Toys manufactured and exported soft toys. The company shut down October 2008 for unknown reasons.
Many suppliers visited the factory recently to collect on outstanding accounts/debts amounting to over 400,000 Yuan (approximately US$58,552). The owner was nowhere to be found.
The debt collectors decided to ransack the factory to collect debt evidence and came across a list of 2007 New year’s “gifts” that were paid to regime officials.
The roster specifies more than 40 “gift” transactions, actually bribes, and detailed the names and the amount paid each individual. According to the recipient’s importance, the “gift amount” is staggered, from a high of 10,000 Yuan cash to supermarket vouchers worth 200 Yuan.
The list also detailed 94,000 Yuan of expenditures for gift cards, 24,000 Yuan cash, 17,800 Yuan in vouchers, and 9,000 Yuan worth of brand-name clothing—144,800 Yuan in all.
This disclosure once again showcases the common practice of merchants and others offering bribes in the form of “gifts” to Chinese officials during holiday time, hoping for a favour from the regime. There is no other way to do business in China at present—Chinese officials are the barriers to either smooth or rocky business transactions of any kind in China. These bribes are guarantees for business owners and could be looked on as “public relations between the regime and the citizens.”
by globalization, finance, politics forum Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008 -
forecasting: China’s coming collapse: corruption, finance, trade, outsourcing, politics, leadership, government, law, and society
Has China’s ongoing reform altered the nation’s political-economic landscape as far as government corruption is concerned? What is the next if this corruption goes deeper?
A compelling new report says that runaway corruption in China poses a lethal threat to the nation’s economic development and “undermines the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.”
Evidence from official audits, press articles and law enforcement data, the report says, indicates that “corruption in China is both pervasive and costly.”
Bribery, kickbacks, theft and fraud, particularly by government officials, are said to be rampant.
Pei Minxin (裴敏欣) wrote the report issued last month by the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, based in Washington. Pei is a political scientist educated at the Shanghai International Studies University. He earned his PhD at Harvard and his work has been widely published in the US.
The report asserts that corruption in China “has spillover effects beyond its borders” that hurt US, Japanese and other foreign investors.
“Illicit behavior by local officials could expose Western firms to potentially vast environmental, human rights and financial liabilities,” the report says.
Public statements by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and other senior Chinese officials suggest that China’s leaders are well aware of the widespread problem but have been unwilling to curb it.
The report says: “The odds of an average corrupt official going to jail are at most 3 out of 100, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity.”
If Hu comes down too hard on corruption, he risks losing support of the delegates at the recently held party Congress who elected him. Those delegates are drawn largely from party officials at the local and provincial level.
Pei is not alone in assessing corruption in China. George Zhibin Gu ( 顾志斌), an investment banker who was educated at Nanjing University and earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan, has suggested that corruption may destroy China’s economy, which has been growing at 8 percent to 10 percent a year. In the West, a 3 percent growth rate is respectable……. (more details fromCleveland Indy Media)
Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China
(Cont’d)
Pollution, corruption, food adulteration
The Paralympics had barely drawn to a close when news of the poisoned milk powder broke. If the Sanlu Group had not been partly owned by New Zealand’s Fonterra and launched an investigation, thousands more babies might be dying from the results of melamine poisoning. The authorities had known there was a problem since December 2007, but it was all hushed up because of the Olympics.
Food and water contamination is a massive problem in China. Zhou Qing, award-winning author of What Kind of God – A Survey of the Current Safety of China’s Food, warned years ago that food security could ultimately spark the collapse of the CCP, and there are increasing signs that the people are less accepting of the situation. Certainly the statistics make sobering reading.
Over 40 per cent of drinking water in rural China falls short of government standards, animal feed is almost universally tainted with melamine, excessive pesticides and chemical fertilisers are used to boost yields, and harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Talcum powder is routinely added to flour and rice is chemically whitened. And yet, miraculously, the CCP is still able to ensure access to the best-quality organically grown produce for party officials.
Throughout 2008, the CCP has used the global financial crisis to reinforce the superiority of the country’s social system. In reality, though, China is far from immune. Its stock market has plunged by nearly two-thirds in the 11 months to September and the economy remains sluggish, with large numbers of factories going bankrupt as international demand for Chinese-made consumer goods slides. According to the State Planning and Development Commission, nearly 70,000 small- to medium-sized companies went out of business in the first half of 2008.
It is these factors and their associated social repercussions that most threaten the CCP’s monopoly on political power. As well as the poor and hungry, beneficiaries of Party patronage, who had grown extremely rich in previous years, are known to be unhappy that their worth has been cut by 50 per cent of late.
Meanwhile corruption, rampant throughout the financial markets, has reached epidemic levels among government officials, and people have finally had enough. In August, 28-year-old Yang Jia allegedly broke into the Zhabei Branch of Shanghai’s Bureau of Public Security, where 2700 police officers were working, and stabbed six policemen to death and wounded four more.
In any normal society, this would be horrific news. Yet 90 per cent of bloggers and Internet users in China showed sympathy and support for Yang after rumours spread that he had been badly treated by police in the past. At his second trial in October, in a display of public dissatisfaction with the regime, more than 1000 supporters gathered outside the court to support Yang. One man held a huge banner that read, The knight-errant will endure forever. Many others shouted, ‘Overthrow the fascist government! Overthrow the Chinese Communist Party! Yang Jia is a hero!’ A small group was even bold enough to wear T-shirts displaying Yang Jia’s photo. The protests were to no avail, however, as Yang was executed in November.
It is a measure of the level of anger at social injustice and the bias of the judicial system that so many people, including ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic Stadium designer Ai Weiwei, should publicly support a suspected cop-killer. And the prevailing mood of dissatisfaction is growing. Riots are now a daily occurrence, including in June when an attempted police cover-up over the assault and death of a teenage girl triggered large-scale violence in Guizhou Province. Up to 100,000 are reported to have participated in the riot, with 160 office buildings and 40 cars torched. (to be cont’d)
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the arrest of Guan Jian, a reporter with the Beijing-based weekly Wangluo Bao (Network News), while investigating allegedly corrupt real estate transactions in Taiyuan, the capital of the northern province of Shanxi. Guan was arrested on 1 December and has been held incommunicado ever since.
It is the second case this month of a journalist being arrested as a result of reporting on alleged abuse of authority and corruption in Shanxi. CCTV reporter Li Min has been held since 4 December.
“Abuse of authority by local officials is common in this region, which is biggest source of coal in China and is riddled with corruption,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is becoming increasingly dangerous for journalists to investigate corruption allegations involving officials. We urge the central government to investigate these cases and punish those who are really guilty.”
Beijing News quoted Shanxi Public Security Department sources as saying Guan has himself been charged with corruption. He was arrested at a Taiyuan hotel by police officers from Zhangjiakou in the neighbouring province of Hebei. Video footage recorded by the hotel’s security camera shows him being forcibly taken away in a car by five men.
Guan, 49, went to Taiyuan at the end of November to investigate allegations of illegal land transactions involving a real estate company and local officials. Wangluo Bao has not named the company but it is reportedly headed by the deputy director of the Shanxi People’s Congress.
Wangluo Bao editor Ren Pengyu said to Beijing news he has had no contact with Guan since a call a few hours before he went missing in which he said he had just had a good interview.
Guan’s son Guan Yufei told the Reuters news agency he had not had news of his father since his abduction. “His friends couldn’t reach him, his colleagues couldn’t either,” he told Reuters. “At first we thought he had just gone on a reporting trip, but then after several days when he still wasn’t in touch, we got worried.”
Guan Yufei went to Taiyuan to look for his father but, aside from the hotel security camera footage, came back empty-handed.
CCTV reporter Li Min was arrested at her Beijing home on 4 December by four policemen who had been sent from Shanxi province by Shanxi prosecutor He Shusheng, whom Li had accused of abuse of authority in a report broadcast by CCTV. Like Guan, Li has herself been accused of corruption.
Crime scene, when police tried to take remove the victim’s body. (The Epoch Times)
To cover-up a death caused by a forced demolition, police went to extremes to abscond with the victim’s corpse from the family in the hospital’s parking lot in eastern China’s Yantai City, Shandong Province. Currently, relatives do not know the whereabouts of the victim’s body.
The victim’s name was Sun Jianjun. His younger brother told The Epoch Times, “My brother was severely beaten on November 25, and he was in critical condition until the morning of November 27. The doctor said his body temperature and blood pressure recovered to normal, but then again, my family were notified that evening at 11:15 p.m. that he passed away after another medical rescue attempt. When I arrived at the hospital, I saw six police in the ward.”
“After the police left around 2:30 a.m. on November 28, I discovered seven police vehicles parked under the hospital building, and another ten arrived about 9:00 a.m. We guessed that police planned to remove my brother’s body, so we called all our relatives to come and lift my brother’s body and walked out the hospital together. Nearly a hundred police suddenly came up, pulled away my family members and relatives, and loaded my brother’s body in a car with plate “Luf8477” and disappeared. Up until now, we still don’t know where my brother’s body is.”
According to The Epoch Times reporter’s investigation, the Yiantan Municipal Police Bureau started a forced demolition with the excuse of building police family apartments. Before the demolition, the developer agreed to compensate the Sun family 1.8 million yuan, but later they cut the compensation to only one-third of the agreed upon amount.
The family head SunSier (the father of the deceased victim) was injured with an axe. (The Epoch Times)
Around 1:00 a.m. on November 25, around 40 people came to Sun’s house to carry out the forced demolition. They first set fire to one of the houses. When the family rushed out to fight the fire, they broke into the house and beat the family; three family members were severely injured and admitted to the hospital.
After the beating, demolition personnel razed the houses using an excavator.
According to the Sun family, they have resisted the forced demolition eight times since this past April, although they had repeatedly reported this to the authorities and local media, nothing happened. Their houses have finally been destroyed plus the cost of one of the son’s lives.
Ms. Wang Haizhen, a vet from Hebei Animal Pharmaceutical Co., exposes corruption within the industry. (The Epoch Times)
Ms. Wang Haizhen, a veterinarian from the Hebei Province Animal Pharmaceutical Co, recently went public with information exposing corruption in China’s food industry.
According to her, as early as 2005, several toxic substances including melamine were detected in some animal feed, resulting in contaminated milk powder, eggs, and pork having entered the food market and harming consumers. She said after the Sanlu Company’s contaminated baby formula incident, many other companies in the area have still been using chemicals such as the known carcinogen iodized rhodium protein, which is more dangerous than melamine.
Wang’s husband was arrested a few years ago for contacting the authorities in regards to contaminated animal feed. When the Sanlu incident occurred, she made the decision to not only continue appealing for her husband’s release but also follow in his footsteps by appealing for the people.
Wrongfully Imprisoned
Gao Songlin, Wang’s husband, was a sales manager for the Feilong Company, a subsidiary of the Hebei Animal Pharmaceutical Co. In 2005, Gao discovered that certain banned substances were being used in the formulas for some animal feed the company had been producing. Much of this feed was already distributed, which means counterfeit drugs and toxic feed additives had already entered the market and contaminated the animal husbandry in some areas. This later led to the subsequent emergence of contaminated milk powder, eggs, and pork.
Gao was shocked by all this. He made arrangements to speak with An Diajin, the head of the legal department of the company in an effort to have the toxic substances removed from the animal feed formula. Gao also reported it to the Ministry of Agriculture several times. A month after the seizure of the company, An Dianjin falsely accused Gao of embezzlement. What should have been a civil case turned into a criminal case without a criminal investigation. Gao was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison.
Wang said, “The accusations are entirely false!”
Wang remarked that authorities had long since been aware of the presence of toxic substances in animal feed and its harmful effects but did their best to keep it quiet. She said they failed to take any preventive measures, and in order to protect their own best interests, they retaliated against the whistleblower.
“When my husband said he would report it, the person from the Pharmaceutical Company said, ‘Go ahead! Many of our men are the authorities.”
Toxic Materials Still Being Used
According to Wang, Hebei is the largest manufacturing base in China. It contains several large animal pharmaceutical companies for food additives, animal feed and animal pharmaceuticals. The Feilong Animal Pharmaceutical Company is one of them.
Wang said, although the Feilong Company was closed, it quickly changed its name and went on with business. Its plant and employees never changed. Just like the Sanlu Company, it changed its name and went right on with business.
According to Wang, a lot of manufacturers are still using melamine even after the Sanlu Scandal was exposed. Besides melamine, they also add large doses of Rh proteins, Lipiodol, Clenbuterol, attractant agents, just to name a few, to get the effect of accelerating the growth rate of animals. But the chemicals and toxic materials they are adding can easily have carcinogenic effects. Some of these additives are more dangerous than melamine.
She reported that in Hebei alone, there are several hundred companies like this. Besides these, there are several thousand unregistered companies. There are many cases like these in other parts of the country.
According to Wang, people on the inside know all the dirty tricks. Therefore they are usually very careful when it comes to eating meat. Consuming meat containing these additives on a long-term basis can lead to serious health consequences. Higher cancer rates nowadays are directly associated with eating contaminated meat.
She said it’s a secret trick of the trade to avoid meat as much as possible……. (more details from The Epochtimes)
BEIJING (AFP) — China’s second-richest person, who made his fortune building up the nation’s largest home appliance chain, has been detained on suspicion of market manipulation, state media reported on Monday.
Hong Kong-listed shares in Huang Guangyu’s company, Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings, were also suspended on Monday, according to a statement from the firm to the city’s stock exchange.
The shares were suspended “pending the release of an announcement in relation to price sensitive information”, the statement said.
This followed a report on the website of Chinese state-run finance magazine Caijing saying Huang had been detained and was under investigation on suspicion of market manipulation.
The magazine, which did not reveal its sources, said the detention took place Wednesday last week, and other Chinese media outlets carried the story.
With assets of 18.4 billion yuan (2.7 billion dollars), Huang was ranked as number two on a list of China’s richest people issued by US magazine Forbes in October.
An executive at Gome’s investor relations department contacted by AFP Monday morning said she was not aware of the reported case.
By Samuel Spencer, Epoch Times Staff, Nov 18, 2008 -
People watch armed police from the side of the street. (The Epoch Times)
Between 2,000 and 10,000 people protested and attacked a Communist Party office in Gansu province of Northwest China early Tuesday. 60 people were reported to have been hurt in the protests.
The numbers of protestors varied in reports —state-run media reported 2,000 protestors, and various online blogs reported that close to 10,000 people had been protesting.
The riots are believed to have occurred due to the regime’s decision to move its offices at the city of Longnan to another city. One blog reported that the move had resulted in the termination of housing construction for thousands of families who had been affected in the Sichuan earthquake. The May earthquake killed 275 people in Longnan and destroyed many houses.
State-run media reported that 30 residents had gathered on Monday to protest the reallocation of the office, but that the number had quickly grown.
The violence is only the latest of numerous angry protests that have broken out against the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
In recent weeks, numerous protests by disgruntled taxi drivers have broken out across the country, especially in Chongqing. The taxi driver protests were prompted by what many believe to be collusion between the regime and fleet owners to let taxi drivers bear the brunt of the fallout from low fares and rising costs.
In June, 30,000 people rioted outside the Party office in Guizhou province, setting fire to government vehicles after a local girl’s death. The death of the 15-year-old girl, who had been raped and murdered, was widely rumored to have been covered up by police and government officials.
The Chinese Communist Party has often used a growing economy to offset questions about its human rights records and its iron-fisted rule, but the recent economic downturn is now testing the limits of how far free expression can go under the Communist regime.
By CHARLES HUTZLER, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, USA, Saturday, November 15, 2008-
LITI VILLAGE, China — Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.
Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical.
Yet the deaths of Xiaokai and at least four other babies are not included in China’s official death toll from its worst food safety scare in years. The Health Ministry’s count stands at only three deaths.
The stories of these uncounted babies suggest that China’s tainted milk scandal has exacted a higher human toll than the government has so far acknowledged. Without an official verdict on the deaths, families worry they will be unable to bring lawsuits and refused compensation.
So far, nobody is suggesting large numbers of deaths are being concealed. But so many months passed before the scandal was exposed that it’s likely more babies fell sick or died than official figures reflect.
Beijing’s apparent reluctance to admit a higher toll is reinforcing perceptions that the authoritarian government cares more about tamping down criticism than helping families. Lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government or Sanlu, the formula maker……. (more details from The Washington Post)
BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing authorities have issued an order to destroy the home of one of China’s leading rights activists, who has been in police custody for more than 200 days, her husband and lawyer said Tuesday.
The plight of Ni Yulan is one of the highest-profile of the many so-called “land grab” cases in China, where city residents are evicted from their homes or farmers kicked off their lands to make way for developments.
Ni, 47, is a long-time campaigner against such government-backed land grabs and was jailed for a year in 2002 for her activist work, and she is now facing losing the home she shares with her husband.
Beijing’s Xicheng court recently ordered developers to level Ni’s home and told the family to vacate the premises by Friday last week, her husband, Dong Jiqin, told AFP, adding he had refused to leave.
“They stuck the demolition notice on our front door,” Dong said.
“Nobody came to talk with us, there were no negotiations for compensation, no public hearings.”
Dong said the notice informed him they would be given an apartment somewhere else in Beijing, but there were few details and no official came to speak with them about the offer.
Ni was sentenced in 2002 for “damaging public property” after being arrested at a rally aimed at stopping the demolition of another courtyard home in Beijing.
Dong and rights activists said she was beaten in the 2002 arrest and has since had to walk with a cane due to injuries sustained then.
At that time, Dong and Ni’s courtyard home, in a historic part of central Beijing, became a target for developers and she was re-arrested in late April this year as she campaigned to stop it from being knocked down.
Ni was charged with “obstructing official business,” and she has been in custody ever since, although she has not appeared in court.
Her lawyer, Hu Xiao, said he was pushing for court proceedings to begin quickly.
“She is physically weak and her jailing has put a lot of stress on her,” Hu told AFP.
“She is a handicapped person, so we have asked the court to begin her trial as soon as possible out of respect for her health.”
Dong and Hu said they had hoped a death sentence handed down last month to the head of the Xicheng court, which has overseen Ni’s case, for corruption related to building projects may have helped their cause.
The sentencing of Xicheng court chief Guo Shenggui was announced a few days after one of China’s top law enforcement officials vowed to protect the rights of ordinary citizens in land grab cases.
Dong said he had all along suspected that Guo approved her jailing in 2002 and the police harassment that had followed them ever since.
But he said he feared now that their initial hopes following Guo’s downfall were misplaced.
The Xicheng court refused to answer questions from AFP on Tuesday.
Land grab cases are one of the most sensitive social issues in China, and frequently lead to protests.
As all land belongs to the state in China, local officials enjoy immense powers to determine land-use rights, and critics say residents and farmers are often forcefully evicted in shady deals between the government and developers.
In the latest such incident reported in the state-run press, up to 2,000 people attacked a local Communist Party headquarters in northwest China’s Gansu province on Tuesday.
The protesters smashed windows of the party building and nearby cars in Longnan city to protest the forced demolition of homes and eviction of tenants there, according to the Xinhua news agency.
By Chris Thomas, SOH News, on Thursday November 6th, 2008-
Since May 2008 when the News Office of Hubei authorities illegally shut down the anti-corruption website “China’s supervision network”, the chief of the website Wang Jin-Xiang appealed to Hu Jin-Tao many times without any outcome. He also disclosed that the authorities’ blockade of the website was not supported by any legal documentation and banned him from filing a lawsuit.
Wang Jin-Xiang expressed at an interview with a reporter that the website has gained popularity among commoners, but the authorities accused us of news diversion. Without any legal procedure, a website that exposes the degenerated society of China and communist officials has been sealed off.
He said: [recording]
First, we believe that this practice is inconsistent with the law. Second, our network is to supervise government officials, which is not against the law. Our network, in fact, won the favour of people (in Here) people are allowed to speak. The phenomenon of corruption and law-breaking practices need to be exposed while our website is a platform to encourage freedom of speech. We demanded them to provide legal paper, which the Hubei Provincial Telecommunication Administration Bureau also refused to issue.”
He added: “China’s Supervision Network has been the interest of many righteous people, and petitioners involved in many wronged cases for redressing would also like to publicize their situation over the Internet, in the hope of gaining legal consultations. They often talk about their cases on this website.”
Finally, he also said that China’s Supervision Network is different from other websites in the Mainland, for it stands out as the most in nationwide participation and large web traffic with several tens of thousands of registered users. The deliberate act of the Chinese Communists in blocking the most concerned website in the Mainland is groundless and it’s also unreasonable to ban lawsuit’s against it’s illicit action.
The above news is brought to you by Fu Ming, Lou Lan and hosted by Chris Thomas for Inside China Today on SOH Radio Network.
Real and “fake” reporters collecting hush money (from Internet)
Dai Xiaojun, a reporter from the Shanxi branch office of West Times who took pictures of real and “fake” reporters collecting hush money from the Ganhe coal mine operation in Huobao, Shanxi Province, has recently became famous for exposing the cover-up of a mining accident.
According to beijingnews.com, Ganhe Coal Mine Company tried to cover-up a mining accident that killed a coal miner on September 20. Dai Xiaojun received a tip from a friend on September 25 that the mine company was giving out money to silence reporters, and that about 100 people had lined up to collect the hush money. Dai’s friend, a senior reporter from a newspaper in Shanxi Province who did not want to expose himself, called and suggested that Dai report the story and told Dai to take a camera with him.
Reporters lineup waiting for collecting hush money
Dai said that he had read similar reports before. However, he did not expect to see so many people at the scene. There were 38 people in the 4 pictures he took, and there were many who were not in the photos. The mine company claimed that only 28 people collected hush money, which means that they not only tried to cover-up the mining accident, but also the number of so called reporters who collected the hush money.
Dai sorted through the names iof those he had taken pictures of and found only two with reporter IDs issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People’s Republic of China. The great majority were fake reporters.
Reporters sign-in paper
Dai said that he felt a cold chill run down his spine when he took the pictures. He thought about another reporter, Lan Chengzhang, who was beaten to death while investigating an illegal coal mine in Huiyuan County in Shanxi Province. He therefore feared that the mine owner and the fake reporters would attack him.
Escape Plan
Dai said that he and his coworker had worked up an escape plan. His coworker parked the car downstairs and started the engine, and was supposed to drive off as soon as he ran downstairs. Dai should throw the camera into the car if he was caught before getting into the car, and his coworker should just leave with the camera and call the police later.
Dai said that it only took him a few seconds to take pictures of a list with names of people who had collected hush money because he acted so fast. He took a few more pictures in the stairway. Those people did not realize what happened when he went back to the car. He and his coworker first drove in the opposite direction for fear of being followed. They then turned back.
Dai uploaded the pictures on the Zhi Bo Jian website and published an article to report his findings. He said many people had questioned his motive and reliability. He thought that’s normal because he had hit a sore spot in many people. He said he did not think too much about it once he decided to report the story.
Dai said that a few years ago he read a report about a mining accident in a village in Henan Province. He saw a picture of a tall building in a newspaper with a caption saying that a local mining accident had not been reported to the authorities, and that many people collected hush money inside the building.
Dai said that the picture impressed him so much, and he was wondering why the picture could only be taken outside a building. He wondered if his camera lens could get inside the building to take more pictures of real scenes with real people collecting hush money.
Zan Aizong, formerly a Zhejiang Province reporter for China Ocean Newspaper said that giving reporters “hush money” is a common practice for industries and government officials. Some people would rather pay money to prevent something bad from being exposed to the public.
Zan said that as long asthe General Administration of Press and Publication exists, similar incidents like “hush money,” “fake reporters and fake news reports,” “Sanlu’s tainted milk scandal cover-up,” “earthquake damages cover-up,” and so on will continue to happen. He said that if everyone is living in an environment with untrue news reporting, people will lose their ability to make good judgments and society will become worse. He said the use of hush money is unlikely to happen if non-government-run media outlets are allowed to exist.
BEIJING (AFP) — Thousands of people attacked Chinese police in the southern city of Shenzhen from Friday afternoon to early Saturday morning, state media reported.
Xinhua news agency reported the unrest in an “urgent” report, quoting Shenzhen city’s government saying a police car was burnt when thousands of people protested the death of a 31-year-old motorcyclist on Friday.
The report said the motorcyclist died after driving through a police checkpoint set up as part of a crackdown on illegal motor vehicles in the city’s Bao’an district.
A police officer threw his “interphone” at the passing motorcyclist, the report said, “who reeled down to an electric pole, got injured, and died with futile rescue efforts.”
A subsequent Xinhua report, quoting the city’s police authority, said no police were at the checkpoint and it had been set up by a subdistrict office of Bao’an district.
However, a police patrol was nearby and relatives of the dead man attacked it, blaming the police, the later report said, as 400 people gathered while another 2,000 looked on.
The police car was burnt as the crowd became angry, while some of the onlookers threw stones, Xinhua said.
The later report made no mention of injuries and said the crowd had dispersed by 2:00 am Saturday (1800 GMT Friday).
An official with the subdistrict office had been detained by police, the report added.
Shenzhen is a booming coastal city just over the border from Hong Kong.
It has a population of about eight million people, according to its official website, which made no mention of the violence.
China sees thousands of such disturbances each year as marginalised segments of society rise up against what they see as the heavy-handed practices of local governments, police or powerful businesses.
In June, tens of thousands of people rioted in southwest Guizhou province over claims police had covered up an alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said that over 10,000 people took to the streets in that protest, with up to 150 people injured in clashes with police.
Jane Macartney in Beijing, Times Online, UK, November 5, 2008-
Internet outrage has forced the dismissal of a senior Chinese Communist Party official after video footage from a restaurant security camera showed him shoving the father of an 11-year-old girl he had allegedly assaulted.
It was a moment that stirred fury among parents concerned for the child and touched a chord among the tens of millions of Chinese angered at abuse of power that has become increasingly blatant as prosperity has offered more opportunities for officials to profit from their positions.
Armies of netizens have taken part in numerous online manhunts in China in the past couple of years, but this appears to be the first time that a search by “human flesh engines” has resulted in the sacking of a senior government official and even a police investigation.
The incident began last week when a male diner at a seafood restaurant in the southern city of Shenzhen asked a young girl walking past his table to direct him to the lavatories. Closed-circuit television footage shows a pot-bellied man in a white shirt following a little girl with a ponytail across the room. A couple of minutes later the girl is seen running back alone.
Reports on the internet say the child told her parents that the man grabbed her by the neck and tried to force her into the toilets. She ran for help. The video shows her reappearing with her parents to look for the man. He returns to the dining room and into the frame, where he is seen shoving away the girl’s father when challenged to explain his behaviour.
Even state media said that the man then shouted: “Yes, I did it. So what? How much to you want? Just tell me. I’ll give you the money.”
The two men argue and the older man points and tries to push away the father. He shouts: “Do you know who I am? I am from the Ministry of Transportation in Beijing. I have the same seniority as the mayor of your city. So what if I grabbed the neck of a small child? You people count for fart! If you dare challenge me, just wait and see how I will deal with you.” When the father calls the police, the man leaves with his female companion.
Chinese websites reported that the police said the man had drunk too much, did not remember anything and, with no witnesses to the girl being assaulted, there was no evidence that he had behaved indecently.
An online furore soon led to his being tracked down and identified as Lin Jiaxiang, party secretary of the Shenzhen Maritime Bureau. Photos of Mr Lin, 58, receiving various government awards, including a commendation on behalf of his “Civilised Work Unit”, were soon plastered across the internet.
He was dismissed on Monday. The Ministry of Transport party committee said that his “wild words and behaviour have had an extremely negative impact on society”.
Online commentators were enraged about the incident. One wrote on the website sina.com: “It looks like organised crime and the Government should swap places. In this case organised crime seems more righteous than the Government.”
Review: China in 2008– the CCP started to lose its stranglehold (3)
Posted by chinaview on January 1, 2009
The Diplomat, Australia, 24-Dec-2008 -
Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China
(cont’d)
Millions of Internet users renounce the (Communist) Party
While governments of Western countries, including Australia, still fail to appreciate how fragile the communist regime really is, more and more people in China are awakening from their previous delusions about the Party.
On the Internet, more than 44 million people have already publicly renounced the CCP and its related organisations, while many so-called ‘naked’ officials are busy transferring their money – and sending their wives and children – overseas in anticipation of having to leave the country in a hurry one day.
Official figures show that at least 4000 suspected corrupt officials have already fled China, taking with them more than five billion yuan ($1.1 billion), but it’s not only low-ranking officials who are leaving the country.
In 2005, Chen Yonglin, consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney, defected. This year two high-profile Party cadres, Xin Weiming, Deputy Head of Luwan District of Shanghai, and Yang Xianghong, Party Member Secretary of the Lucheng District of Wenzhou City, did likewise. They both disappeared while visiting France in October.
Many people, including a large proportion inside the CCP, no longer doubt that the Party boat is sinking. The question is, of course, how many more people must suffer prior to its ultimate demise? (End)
* Jennifer Zeng’s biography, Witnessing History – One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, is published by Allen & Unwin.
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- The Diplomat
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