Newsdesk: Family planning protests continue, officials try to make quiet amends

The Guangxi family planning unrest continues in Rong county. If you want the original Chinese, you can catch the latest from RFA’s Cantonese service and Mandarin service. There is plenty of background in English, from this blog, from the RFA Web site, and from ESWN. Here is a summarized version of a recent Cantonese report:

Around 3,000 villagers converged Wednesday on government offices in Shitao township in Rong county, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, to protest at what they say are violent and coercive tactics used by local family planning officials to enforce birth quotas. At least a dozen people were detained after clashes and a tense standoff between local people and riot police which lasted several hours, one eyewitness said. Residents of many villages across Guangxi have described attacks on their home during which everything they own was confiscated. They have also detailed forced abortions carried out in hospitals, even as late as nine months. Villagers who exceeded birth quotas in the past paid a relatively small fine, they said, but now officials have begun extracting exorbitant amounts from local people. Many have fled the area to avoid further trouble with the authorities.

On Wednesday, local officials posted handbills on the streets of Shitao township calling on people to uphold the values of a ‘harmonious society’, a catchphrase of President Hu Jintao, and to refrain from inciting others to confronting the authorities. The fly-posters threatened that those who incited people to surround government offices would be pursued to the bitter end and might receive heavy punishment. There was no mention of the allegations of violence made against family planning departments by local people. The handbills sparked further protests in Shitao, where the main demand being voiced was for just such a response from local authorities. A resident of Shitao surnamed Zhang said several hundred riot police were sent to deal with the crowd, resulting in a tense standoff that lasted several hours. Zhang said: “I reckon there had to be around 3,000 civil rights activists there, and police too. It was very tense.” But he added that while the police secured the area, they didn’t beat or use force against the protesters.

However, a villager surnamed Zhou said he did see such scenes. “There were police there with truncheons and they were hitting people around them,” he told RFA’s Cantonese service.

Meanwhile, residents of Lucun county near Guangxi’s Yulin city said local officials had sent teams to repair the houses of some of the villagers which had been damaged in punitive raids by family planning officials. Some residents were told they could go to the family planning bureau to pick up their belongings, which were confiscated in raids earlier in the month.