2015-01-28
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A villager lies injured after being confronted by police in Shantou’s Chaoyang district, Jan. 27, 2015.
Photo courtesy of Yuyi villagers
Officials in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on Wednesday pledged to investigate allegations of corruption at a village whose angry residents have besieged government buildings near Shantou city.
Protests began on Jan. 4 in Yuyi village in Shantou’s Chaoyang district over the sale of a tract of farmland by village officials, local residents told RFA.
“Several thousand people have been kicking up a major fuss outside the government offices on several occasions, but with no result,” a Yuyi resident surnamed Lin said on Wednesday.
An official who answered the phone at the Chaoyang district government offices on Wednesday confirmed that the villagers had complained.
“Yes, there have been [complaints from] this village,” the official said. “Of course we don’t know whether what the villagers are saying is true or false, but we will deal with any complaint.”
“The details of the complaint will be dealt with by the receiving department.”
More than 1,000 people gathered outside the headquarters of China’s ruling Communist Party’s village committee in Yuyi on Tuesday, calling on officials to come out and face accusations of graft.
“We went to the government offices … and gathered at the gate, calling on the party secretary to come out and give us some answers,” an Yuyi resident surnamed Fang said.
“He never came out, so we went into the offices, but we never found him,” he said. “After that, a lot of police in riot gear came.”
He said police had beaten some of the villagers. “One person was injured,” he said.
Village surrounded
Villagers said the government had stepped up its response to the protests by throwing a security cordon around the whole village.
“The government mobilized the military and the police, who have surrounded the village,” Lin said.
“The villagers’ land has been sold off, but we haven’t seen any of the money.”
“People were growing fruit and vegetables on that land, and now they are making a fuss because they have no income left,” Lin said.
“They didn’t go through the proper channels in managing this land.”
Lin said a local journalist who tried to cover the story was detained.
A second official who answered the phone at the Guanbu township government, which administers Yuyi village, said several thousand villagers had blockaded the local village committee buildings “for a long time.”
“We are in the process of dealing with this, and we have run into some difficulty,” the official said on Wednesday. “Therefore, there has been no progress.”
He denied that the government is refusing to act on their complaint, however. “We have tried to explain the facts to them,” he said.
