From Our Peaceful Competitor

[Annie]

Links at site, very much worth reading:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/12/china-opens-fire-kills-20-protesters.html

Friday, December 09, 2005
China Opens Fire, Kills 20 Protesters!

Reuters and The New York Times are reporting that the slaughter of social (democracy) protesters was in "Dongzhou in Guangdong province" near Hong Kong. However, as you can see from the maps below, there is a Dongzhou near Beijing. Guangdong Province is the region surrounding Hong Kong.

This is for certain. The village is close to Hong Kong and is located in the Guangdong province somewhere close to Shanwei.


Taishi, another village near "Guangzhou", China has been at odds with the Communist Party since holding "social change" protests earlier this year. Below, authorities invade and squash a protest in Taishi earlier this year.


The villagers are shocked... "We didn't expect them to be so evil!"

China slaughters at least 20 democracy protesters! The protesters were having a sit-in demonstration when the officials started firing on them:

Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by security forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That death toll remains unknown, but is estimated to be in the hundreds.

The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area in the wake of the heavily armed assault.

"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody...

...On Dec. 6, while villagers were mounting a sit-in demonstration, police made a number of arrests, bringing lots of people out into the streets, where they managed to detain several officers. In response, hundreds of law enforcement agents were rushed to the scene. Everybody, young and old, "went out to watch," said one man who claimed his cousin had been killed by a police officer's bullet in the forehead. "We didn't expect they were so evil. The farmers had no means to resist them."


In August, for more than three weeks, villagers in Taishi in southern China camped out in their village hall demanding the ouster of the mayor and new elections. Riot police violently broke up the protest on August 16, 2005.

Police have now sealed off the city after the two days of violence. Authorities are now detaining people in the village:

Residents said riot police had opened fire on Tuesday on protesters in the village of Dongzhou in Guangdong province after they moved in to quell the unrest. Estimates from residents and rights groups put the number of dead between two and 20.

"Now the authorities are coming to the village to detain people," said one villager, adding his brother was among those shot dead during the demonstrations.

"My parents and my sister-in-law are kneeling in front of the house to ask the government officials to explain the killing," he said in a telephone interview.

He put the number of dead at more than 10 and said bodies were lying in the villagers' houses.

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051210...uhw24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

China Town Sealed After Protesters Slain
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago



BEIJING - Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 20 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, according to villagers and a newspaper report Saturday.

If that death toll is confirmed it would be the deadliest known use of force by security forces against Chinese civilians since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989, and marked an escalation in the social protests that have convulsed the Chinese countryside.

During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.

Police fired into the crowd and killed a handful of people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. Villagers' accounts of the death toll ranged from two and 10, with many missing.

On Saturday, Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper raised the death toll to nearly 20, citing villagers. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd — as the military did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, when hundreds, if not thousands, were killed.

State media have made no mention of the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media and lower-level authorities are leery of releasing information without permission from the central government.

All the villagers said they were nervous and scared and most did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. One man said the situation was still "tumultuous."

A 14-year-old girl said a local official visited the village on Friday and called the shootings "a misunderstanding."

"He said (he) hoped it wouldn't become a big issue," the girl said over the telephone. "This is not a misunderstanding. I am afraid. I haven't been to school in days."

She added, "Come save us."

Another villager said there were at least 10 deaths.

"The riot police are gathered outside our village. We've been surrounded," she said, sobbing. "Most of the police are armed. We dare not to go out of our home."

"We are not allowed to buy food outside the village. They asked the nearby villagers not to sell us goods," the woman said. "The government did not give us proper compensation for using our land to build the development zone and plants. Now they come and shoot us. I don't know what to say."

One woman said an additional 20 people were wounded.

"They gathered because their land was taken away and they were not given compensation," she said. "The police thought they wanted to make trouble and started shooting."

She said there were "several hundred police with guns in the roads outside the village on Friday. "I'm afraid of dying. People have already died."

Hong Kong's English language South China Morning Post newspaper on Saturday quoted villagers who said authorities were trying to conceal the deaths by offering families money to give up bodies of the dead.

"They offered us a sum but said we would have to give up the body," an unidentified relative of one slain villager, 31-year-old Wei Jin, was quoted as saying. "We are not going to agree."

Police were carrying photos of villagers and trying to find people linked to the protest, the newspaper said, citing villagers.

Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control in 1997, but within its context as a "Special Administrative Region," the former British colony maintains a high degree of press freedom. Its proximity to Dongzhou gives local reporters an advantage in covering the story.

The number of protests in China's vast, poverty-stricken countryside has risen in recent months as anger comes to a head over corruption, land seizures and a yawning wealth gap that experts say now threatens social stability. The government says about 70,000 such conflicts occurred last year, although many more are believed to go unreported.

"These reports of protesters being shot dead are chilling," Catherine Baber, deputy Asia director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "The increasing number of such disputes over land use across rural China, and the use of force to resolve them, suggest an urgent need for the Chinese authorities to focus on developing effective channels for dispute resolution."

Amnesty spokeswoman Saria Rees-Roberts said Friday in London that although she did not want to compare Tuesday's clashes with Tiananmen Square, "police shooting people dead is unusual in China and it does demand an independent investigation."

Like many cities in China, Shanwei, the city where Dongzhou is located, has cleared suburban land once used for farming to build industrial zones. State media have said the Shanwei Red Bay industrial zone is slated to have three electricity-generating plants — a coal-fired plant, a wave power plant and a wind farm.

Shanwei already has a large wind farm on an offshore island, with 25 turbines. Another 24 are set for construction.

Earlier reports said the building of the $743 million coal-fired power plant, a major government-invested project for the province, also was disrupted by a dispute over land compensation.

Authorities in Dongzhou were trying to find the leaders of Tuesday's demonstration, a villager said.

The man said the bodies of some of the shooting victims "are just lying there."

"Why did they shoot our villagers?" he asked. "They are crazy!"