[Onthebarricades] GUANGXI/CHINA: Latest on unrest

Sat May 26 13:59:39 PDT 2007

http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=37312

Tension remains high in the Guangxi region, nearly a week after thousands clashed with police over an official campaign that residents say included forced abortions, property destruction and crippling fines aimed at violators of the so-called "one-child policy." 

"If they continue to act like bandits then of course people are going to fight back," said a woman in the city of Shapi who gave only her surname, Liang. 

"The people are calm now but we are waiting to see how the government is going to deal with this," she said. 

She was one of many people in Shapi, the scene of fierce recent rioting, to angrily demand that authorities right the wrongs of the crackdown. 

Crowds of agitated residents surrounded foreign journalists waving what appeared to be typed and hand-written complaint letters and other documents related to the campaign. 

"We demand to know what the authorities are going to do to make up for this," said a woman surnamed Liu. 

She said her home was looted by local authorities who arrived to impose a fine of 24,000 yuan (3,100 dollars) for having a second child, and was one of many in the region to angrily demand justice. 

"We want to know if we will get our property back," she said. 

State media had reported Thursday that authorities put down the unrest in Guangxi, a sprawling subtropical region near the Vietnam border, but residents scoffed at that. 

Calm returned only because the government "work teams" carrying out the three-month enforcement blitz had withdrawn in the face of public anger, they said. 

"It's calm now because the work teams don't dare come out, especially after (the riots). They are afraid to come out," said a businessman surnamed Guan in the nearby town of Shuangwang. 

He was ordered to pay 120,000 yuan for having five children from two marriages, he said. Like many residents, he is refusing to pay. 

First introduced in the late 1970s amid fears of runaway population growth, China's controversial family planning policies limit urban residents to one child while allowing some exceptions for rural and minority residents. 

The anger felt by people in Guangxi was spurred in part by what they described as sudden enforcement of rules long ignored by officials. 

The official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday that 28 people in Guangxi had been arrested for rioting after seven towns erupted in violence. 

About 3,000 people protested, ransacking government offices and destroying official vehicles, according to the official version, but residents in several towns say the numbers of rioters and arrests were far higher. 

State media has reported that teams of officials were sent to the region to investigate whether official abuses contributed to the unrest, but residents in several towns said no one had come to hear their grievances. 

Officials in Bobai county, at the centre of the unrest, conceded this week there may have been "problems" in enforcement methods but on Thursday blamed the violent public reaction on "behind-the-scenes instigators" manipulating ignorant villagers. 

A crowd of people in Shapi erupted in protest on Friday when a journalist pointed out these claims. 

"Wrong! That's wrong! They are the ones stirring things up," one shouted. 

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/23/china.riots.ap/

China: 28 detained after 'family planning' riots
POSTED: 0059 GMT (0859 HKT), May 23, 2007 
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Authorities have detained 28 people after thousands of farmers rioted to protest fines levied on those who had more children than allowed under China's family planning policy, state media said.
Between 300 and 3,000 people were involved in the demonstrations outside government offices at the weekend in six towns in Bobai, a county in the southern Guangxi region, the Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday in the first official account of the violence.

"They verbally abused and attacked government workers and civil police," Xinhua said. "In some cases, the county government office's main gate, its walls, office equipment, documents and archives were damaged. A few people burned and damaged cars and some motorcycles."

The 28 have been detained on suspicion of publicizing the demonstration, and of provoking and participating in the violence, Xinhua said.

A Bobai police officer who only gave her surname, Zhang, said she was "unclear" about the incident. A man from the Bobai county government who refused to give his name said he knew nothing about the violence.

The Xinhua report said the protest was triggered by unhappiness over fines that villagers said were imposed "arbitrarily and brutally" as part of efforts to control population growth in the area. It did not give any details.

China's family planning policy -- implemented in the late 1970s -- limits most urban couples to one child and families in some rural areas to two to control population growth and conserve natural resources.

Villagers said local regulations allow families to have two children if the first is a girl. Families are limited to one child if the first is a boy. No one can have more than two children.

Critics say China's family planning policy has led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female fetuses in hopes of getting boys.

Reports earlier this week said all public servants had been ordered to collect fines from people who violated the policy. If violators failed to pay within three days, their homes would be demolished and their belongings seized.

One villager said some fees were as high as $1,300 -- an unmanageable amount for an area where most annual incomes were only $130.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=151151&version=1&template_id=45&parent_id=25

      Chinese villagers flay brutal 'one-child' blitz Published: Friday, 25 May, 2007, 01:19 PM Doha Time 

            A woman cycles past a billboard encouraging couples to have only one child along a road leading to a village in the suburb of the Chinese capital Beijing 
      BOBAI, China:  Residents of this southern China county yesterday angrily accused authorities of forcing women to have abortions and vandalising homes in a brutal campaign to enforce birth-control policies.
      "Many women have been forced to have abortions. Authorities are going into their homes and destroying their homes to implement the policy," said a woman in Bobai county who gave only her surname, Chen.
      "The people are angry. This is not the way to carry it out."
      Bobai was at the heart of riots that erupted late last week across Guangxi region and saw thousands of people take to the streets in anger against local authorities' efforts to enforce China's so-called "one-child policy".
      Chen was one of dozens of people in the county to corroborate reports that government "work teams" had raided homes, carried out mass arrests and levied crippling fines across Guangxi, a sprawling region near the Vietnam border.
      Authorities had even forced women pregnant with their first child to undergo abortions merely because they had not completed paperwork required before getting pregnant, said a woman surnamed Xu, a waitress in a Bobai restaurant that was deserted at lunchtime due to fear pervading the district.
      "This has been going on for about three months. The one-child policy is wrong. We are totally against it. I know a woman who committed suicide by jumping in the river because she did not want to be caught by the work teams," Xu said.
      A feeling of palpable tension has gripped the area, where deserted roads contrast with bright red-and-white banners and billboards bearing government slogans such as: "Support the one-child policy" and "Happiness is to have one child".
      "Everyone is afraid to come out," Xu said.
      The mood was even more intense Thursday at Wang Mao, a nearby village where about 50 angry residents surrounded foreign journalists to loudly accuse work teams of beating residents and imposing exorbitant fines on violators.
      "Our children were sitting on the table and they barged in and turned the table over and were screaming and shouting at us," an elderly woman said over the din of angry voices.
      One woman, apparently aged in her 20s and holding a one-year-old child, said she was fined 30,000 yuan ($3,900) for having a second child after failing to complete paperwork that would have allowed the birth.
      "This is not about population control. It's about money. They just want money," one man standing alongside the woman shouted.
      Several villagers said residents of the area fought back, driving off work teams.
      "The work teams don't dare come out now," the man said.
      First introduced in the late 1970s amid fears of runaway population growth, China's controversial family planning policies limit urban residents to one child while allowing rural families two children if their first child is a girl.
      The official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday that 28 people in Guangxi had been arrested for rioting after seven towns erupted in violence.
      About 3,000 people had protested, ransacking government offices and destroying official vehicles, according to the official version.
      But a man surnamed Wang in Bobai town said the numbers were far higher, backing up other residents' assertions that tens of thousands of people had protested.
      "Don't believe the government. Many, many more people than that have been arrested. This is happening everywhere," he said.
      "The one-child policy is correct. China has too many people. But the way they are carrying it out is wrong. It is not right to smash up people's homes and fine them."
      "Everyone here is against the government."-AFP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201496.html

Birth Control Crackdown Sparks Riots In Rural China
Officials Enforce One-Child Policy With Brutal Drive to Collect Fines

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 23, 2007; Page A12 

BOBAI, China, May 22 -- Word came down from the central government in Beijing that it was time to strengthen enforcement of China's one-child policy.

In response, people here said, birth control bureaucrats showed up in a half-dozen towns with sledgehammers and threatened to knock holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines imposed for having more than one child. Other family planning officials, backed by hired toughs, pushed their way into businesses owned by parents of more than one child and confiscated everything from sacks of rice to color televisions, they said.

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The brutal fine-collection drive was launched last week around Bobai, 110 miles southeast of Nanning in southern China's Guangxi province. It constituted the latest example of abusive local enforcement of a policy that China's leadership says is vital to maintaining swift economic growth and spreading its benefits more evenly among a population already at 1.3 billion people.

Local officials eager to meet population quotas have frequently been accused of forcing women to submit to abortions or sterilizations to keep the birthrate down. But the problem in the Bobai area was that lax enforcement of the policy over the years led to a high number of families with several children -- and suddenly the local family planning bureau wanted to collect its fines or else.

"The people who didn't have money, they threatened to knock their houses down, or punch holes in the roof," a resident said.

But the farmers of Bobai and nearby towns have been known since the Qing Dynasty for resistance to highhanded rulers. True to their legacy, they rose up against the collection teams, whom they decried as bandits. Backed by their sons, thousands of peasants and townspeople encircled government and birth control centers across surrounding Bobai County, residents here said, stoning riot police brought in to quell the unrest and, in some places, trashing local offices.

"There was trouble in all the villages around here," said a truck driver who, like most of those interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by local officials.

Even near the main county office building, a witness said, a white banner was unfurled calling for revenge against Su Jianzhong, the Bobai County Communist Party secretary. "Crack down on the head of the bandits, Su Jianzhong," it advertised for all to see, until authorities pulled it down.

The townspeople were all the more unwilling to accept authorities' demands for payment because, as frequently is the case in China, they expressed belief that local officials were generally corrupt and that the money for fines would go to line their pockets rather than into government coffers.

The disorder, which rolled from village to village between Thursday and Saturday, caused a number of injuries to police and protesters, according to witnesses. Townspeople and villagers, relaying unverified reports, said an unknown number of people were killed. Several people reported seeing police carrying pistols and rifles, but there were no firsthand reports of gunfire.

A witness in the nearby town of Dunbu said two dozen officials dressed in uniforms and carrying electric cattle prods barged into a small store near his house Thursday evening and demanded the owner pay an overdue fine or his inventory would be carried off. Neighbors quickly gathered around, he said, and scores of police officers were called in to back up the family planning officials. By the end of the evening, several thousand townspeople and hundreds of police were facing off near local government offices, he said, and the stones began to fly.

The witness said he saw three bloodied protesters, including a primary school student, before the melee subsided and authorities imposed an overnight curfew. Similar outbreaks of violence were reported in the towns of Yongan, Dadong and Shabo, where offices were reported ransacked and police cars burned. Zhang Ming, a local official in Shabo, was among those who witnesses said were injured by the flying stones.

The witnesses said local authorities and police seemed surprised by the vehemence of the townspeople's reaction. A local television report referred to those who participated in the violence as "rebels."

"The police looked like they were afraid," one witness said of the clashes in his neighborhood.

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The Bobai County government issued a statement saying government property was destroyed by the protesters and blaming the outburst on excessive enforcement tactics and attempts by officials to overcharge families with more than one child. By Tuesday, the area was calm except for a continued police presence in the most restive towns and the frequent passage of Public Security Bureau vehicles with sirens blipping.

The way the one-child policy has been interpreted in this region of fertile rice paddies and pineapple fields, families whose first child is a daughter can try again for a son but have to pay a $375 fine for their second offspring, parents said. Those who give birth to third and fourth children have to pay progressively higher fines, residents said.

But, they added, Bobai authorities traditionally have been lenient about collecting the money, realizing that farmers often face a cash shortage between crops. As a result, many Bobai area families, particularly in tradition-bound farming villages along dirt lanes cutting between paddies, have three or more children. For many of them, the new determination to enforce the rules meant financial stress, and for others financial impossibility.

Chen Hua, 32, a mother of two, said she and her husband were suddenly faced with demands for swift payment of their fine. After pleading for a delay, they coughed up the money just before the May 1 Labor Day holiday. Part of the money came from Chen's earnings as a taxi driver, a trade she plies in the nearby city of Yulin for $90 a month while her husband tends the family farm.

Chen said they had a daughter, now 8, but wanted a son as well. He was born six years ago, making them liable for the $375 fine that they paid three weeks ago.

"It's worth it," she said. "I finally got a son. In our area, if you don't have a son, you haven't made it. In the countryside, if we don't have a son, who will take care of us when we are old?"

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