Grandmother Defends Home And Is Buried Alive
11:48am UK, Tuesday March 09, 2010
Peter Sharp, Beijing correspondent
A 70-year-old grandmother in China has been beaten and buried alive by property developers trying to take possession of her land.
Wang Cuyun from Hubei Province was struggling with workmen trying to tear down her house and was allegedly beaten by a worker wielding a wooden stick.
She was dumped in a drainage ditch that ringed her property and a bulldozer covered her with earth, burying her alive.
Witnesses said three policemen were present to supervise the eviction but did nothing to intervene or protect her.
The death of Mrs Wang is the latest in a long series of assualts, intimidation and violence carried out by property developers in their efforts to obtain valuable land for development.
Last December Xi Xinzhu doused himself with petrol and set himself alight, when a group of men burst into his home after he refused to sign re-location papers.
In July 2008 Wang Zaiying was beaten to death at the site of his demolished flat in Lizhuang village. He too had refused to leave his land after bulldozers tore down his home.
Developers often team up with local government officials in carrying out the evictions and then splitting the profits from the sale of the land.
The death of Mrs Wang was confirmed on the local government's website: "Wang Cuyun,a villager from Maodian received an accidental injury at a local demolition site on March 3," said a notice.
"She was taken to hospital but had passed away. The government has begun an investigation and has already arrested a number of people."
Since Friday all news reports on the Chinese internet about Mrs Wang have been censored.
Her son joined other relatives trying to rescue her. It took more than half an hour to pull her free from the ditch, by which time she was dead.
Mrs Wang's son moved her body to the side of a main road and was joined by thousands of local residents protesting at her death.
One man told Hubei Television that policemen had "stood around acting like it was none of their business".
And I though the UK had problems, China really does get worse every day for human rights infringements, though nowt will be done, far too powerful for anyone to mess with.
11:48am UK, Tuesday March 09, 2010
Peter Sharp, Beijing correspondent
A 70-year-old grandmother in China has been beaten and buried alive by property developers trying to take possession of her land.
Wang Cuyun from Hubei Province was struggling with workmen trying to tear down her house and was allegedly beaten by a worker wielding a wooden stick.
She was dumped in a drainage ditch that ringed her property and a bulldozer covered her with earth, burying her alive.
Witnesses said three policemen were present to supervise the eviction but did nothing to intervene or protect her.
The death of Mrs Wang is the latest in a long series of assualts, intimidation and violence carried out by property developers in their efforts to obtain valuable land for development.
Last December Xi Xinzhu doused himself with petrol and set himself alight, when a group of men burst into his home after he refused to sign re-location papers.
In July 2008 Wang Zaiying was beaten to death at the site of his demolished flat in Lizhuang village. He too had refused to leave his land after bulldozers tore down his home.
Developers often team up with local government officials in carrying out the evictions and then splitting the profits from the sale of the land.
The death of Mrs Wang was confirmed on the local government's website: "Wang Cuyun,a villager from Maodian received an accidental injury at a local demolition site on March 3," said a notice.
"She was taken to hospital but had passed away. The government has begun an investigation and has already arrested a number of people."
Since Friday all news reports on the Chinese internet about Mrs Wang have been censored.
Her son joined other relatives trying to rescue her. It took more than half an hour to pull her free from the ditch, by which time she was dead.
Mrs Wang's son moved her body to the side of a main road and was joined by thousands of local residents protesting at her death.
One man told Hubei Television that policemen had "stood around acting like it was none of their business".
And I though the UK had problems, China really does get worse every day for human rights infringements, though nowt will be done, far too powerful for anyone to mess with.
