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)
