Newsdesk: Doing the Nail House Rock in Guangxi

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UPDATED Tuesday April 3. The Chongqing nail house has been demolished. RFA’s Mandarin service has the details (ZH).

The story so far… Many bloggers around the region have been covering the “nail house” phenomenon which has been sweeping through Chinese cyberspace, and which the official media are now forbidden to cover, although bloggers are filling the gap. Essentially, nail houses are property holders who refuse to sell out to developers. Former top Communist Party aide Bao Tong has also been busy penning his opinion of the new Property Law passed by China’s parliament in mid-March:

This is from RFA’s Mandarin service; you can read and listen to the full report in Chinese. It is also available in Cantonese:

Where: Sanhekou village, Beihai City, Guangxi Province

When: Tuesdsay 3/27 and Wednesday 3/28

What: Up to 1,000 people, including anti-riot police, demolition crew in hard hats, and uniformed personnel in military fatigues, forcibly demolished the village and beat villagers who refused to move; several people were injured; local media are prohibited from reporting the clashes; the local public security bureau has ordered websites to delete photos of and postings about the clashes.

Newsdesk: Two tried for Thandar Shwe wedding video

Remember the Burmese wedding video that shocked the world?

China’s “real name registration system” to extend to pre-paid mobile phones

A China Unicom spokeswoman told RFA’s Cantonese service recently that a real-name registration system requiring people to give their ID cards to buy a pre-paid mobile phonecard(ZH) probably wasn’t far off. The government has been trying to introduce real-name registration in a number of areas, including Internet discussion forums, blogs, and even bicycle registration. But not much notice has been taken of the pre-paid mobile phone market – until now, that is:

RFA Video: The Yongzhou Unrest

RFA’s Cantonese service has been given some video of the Yongzhou bus riots. The introductory screen says that 20,000 residents of the city, in Hunan province, took to the streets in protest about a hike in bus fares, in what turned into four days’ rioting.

Vietnam: Lawyer Held in Psychiatric Hospital

VIETNAMESE: One More Victim Confined to Bien Hoa (01/19/07)

Length: 5:43

Female MC: While the United Nations is holding talks about the treatment of women, rumors from overseas and in the country are very concerned about Ms. Bui Kim Thanh, a female lawyer whose specialty is fighting against injustice. She has been held in Ward B4 at the Bien Hoa asylum for over two months, even there is no court order or medical order to keep her there, and even the Amnesty International Organization requested that the Vietnamese government set her free.

Interviews with Sim Sorya

KHMER: Interview with Sim Sorya about KR and Toul Sleng Prison (8/05)

 

Chivita: On July 13, Cambodian Daily quoted Mr. Noun Chea as saying that he “doesn’t believe that Toul Sleng prison had been in existence when he was in power.” However, at the same time, he acknowledged that there was S-21 (Sor 21 correctional center) to educate comrades or officers who were accused of misconduct. During that time, internal rivals are the ones who killed Khmer, he added.

“China Has Come Full Circle” — Bao Tong on the “Enlightenment” ushered in by China’s new Property Law

UPDATE: Bao Tong has written a second essay on the Property Law, which you can read in English here.

This essay was broadcast Friday March 16 by RFA’s Mandarin service.

The Property Law of the People’s Republic of China was passed by a majority of 97% in the National People’s Congress.

What does this mean? It means the final bankruptcy of the theories and policies of the “transitional stage” of socialism proposed by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in 1953.

It means that after repeated twists and turns for more than half a century, China has finally come full circle. Back to where it started. The first half of this circle took the abolition of private property as its centrepoint, with the nationalization of property and of the economy. But the things which were taken from Chinese citizens had precious little to do with either the state or the people. In fact all that nationalized property and the state-run command economy would have been more aptly named “official property” or “the Party leadership economy”, because without officials, you wouldn’t have groups of Party leaders in charges of allocating and disposing of these resources. The result was the blatant plunder of private property in the name of the nation and the people, and the loss of any stable basis for the continuance of socialism, throwing the entire country into a continual process of upheaval. This process, still lauded by some theorists in the Party as ‘revolution’, or ‘Mao Zedong Thought’, or, ‘a firm basis for socialism’, was enshrined in the Constitution.

Sun Wukong comes to Pingdingshan

From Chapter 32 of Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng’en.

樵子道：『此山径过有六百里远近， 名唤平顶山。山中有一洞，名唤莲花洞。洞里有两个魔头，他画影图形，要捉和尚； 抄名访姓，要吃唐僧。

The woodcutter said, “That mountain is around 600 li from here. Its name is Pingdingshan (Flat Top Mountain). Inside the mountain is a cave called Lotus Cave. Inside the cave are two demons who will do anything they can to catch and eat monks from the Tang court.”

In Cambodia, Unsolved Killings: Impunity or Failure?

A 34-year-old union leader was gunned down on February 24, 2007 as he drove home from night-shift work at a Phnom Penh factory.

A local rights-group official who investigated the case was reported by RFA’s Khmer Service as saying he believed that robbery was not the motive for the killing.

The shooting death of Hy Vuthy, a workers’ leader at a garment factory, occurred on the heels of the shooting of a Cambodian singer, also in the capital city.

Newsdesk: Clashes in Guangxi and Hubei

From RFA’s Cantonese service: More than a hundred villagers in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi clashed with police during a protest at pollution caused by a local paper factory, local residents said Monday.
Police in Xinlian village near the city of Cenxi used tear gas to disperse the protesters, and 12 people were detained. Villagers said the factory, which was ordered to stop production, was still actually in operation and still causing severe pollution problems.

One villager said: “They arrested 12 people…The factory only stopped operating for one or two days and then it continued in production.”

“The water has turned black in color. The factory also releases much black smoke. We have complained many times but to no avail.”

A member of staff who answered the phone at the factory toldRFA: “We were shut down and renovated the environmental facilities. The local environmental department said yes already. We have no pollution problem now.”

But an official at the local environmental department said, “We have only checked the facilities. It’s up to the city government to order the shut-down. We have no right to say anything here.”

China’s government records tens of thousands of incidents of popular unrest annually.

While many of these incidents center around land disputes, a growing number of protests focus on environmental concerns as local officials turn a blind eye to polluting industries in a breakneck dash to attract much-needed investment.

Clashes also took place in the central province of Hubei after more than 2,000 villagers resumed planting on land that was requisitioned by local government officials.

A farmer surnamed Li from the massive state-owned Sixin Farm in the Wuhan municipal area said: “There are at least two villagers in serious condition and still in the hospital.”

“The city law enforcement officers even burnt their temporary wooden huts, and most of their belongings are gone. Some have no place to stay. It’s very sad.”

Another villager who fled from the fire said, “I have four people in my family. Chinese New year is coming and we have no place to stay. ”

A spokesman for the farm said, however: “We have already compensated to the farmers and we do not have any relationship with them now. We act only according to the law.”

In China, land is ultimately owned by the state, but is leased to farmers under 30-year responsibility contracts which are not supposed to be broken, but frequently are by local officials anxious to turn a profit with lucrative property deals.

The status of the land on the Sixin farm was not immediately clear.

Photo credits: Aschwin Prein/sxc.hu