2014-10-10
A local resident votes in elections in Wukan village, March 31, 2014.
AFP
Authorities in the rebel village of Wukan in southern China’s Guangdong province have jailed two former local officials who led a long-running campaign against land grabs, forcing them to withdraw from village-level elections, their families told RFA on Friday.
Hong Ruichao and Yang Semao, who had served on the village commmittee following protests in 2011, were tried for “accepting bribes” by a local court in July, on what their relatives said were trumped-up charges.
Yang was jailed for two years, while Hong received a four-year prison term, Hong’s sister Hong Ruiqing told RFA.
“Around the time of the elections, the authorities didn’t want Yang and Hong to stand for election, but they both wanted to stand so as to help the people of Wukan protect their land,” she said.
“My brother, Hong Ruichao, was tried on July 24, and they cobbled together some random evidence to try to make the charges stick,” Hong Ruiqing said.
“My brother said all along that he hadn’t done it, and that he’d been framed; that it was a miscarriage of justice.”
Three weeks later, Yang Semao was also criminally detained, and his family received notification in mid-September of his jail sentence, she said.
“Two days later, we received notification of my brother’s four-year jail term,” Hong Ruiqing said.
“We have been in touch with a lawyer, and we have already lodged an appeal,” she said.
Yang and Hong, both outspoken figures in the villagers’ daring 2011 protest campaign to recover huge tracts of farmland sold by a previous village official, were forced to withdraw from elections to the village committee after being detained in March.
Headlines
Wukan gripped world headlines in 2011 after local people fought off armed police at makeshift barricades, retaining control of their village and prompting provincial officials in Guangdong to back their demands over the heads of authorities in nearby Lufeng city.
Local people were then allowed to re-elect their village committee and its officials in March 2012, with former protest leaders replacing the old guard in a highly publicized poll that was held up as a model of village democracy in rural China.
Former ruling Communist Party village secretary Xue Chang was removed from office and disciplined for corruption.
But subsequent committees have made scant progress on the issue of returning farmland to villagers’ control.
A few weeks before fresh village elections were due last March, Yang and Hong were detained on alleged corruption charges. A third former Wukan committee member, Zhuang Liehong, had already fled to the United States in search of political asylum.
