Eminent Domain in China

[SF-TX]

Grandmother Defends Home And Is Buried Alive

2:23pm 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.

Shenzen, China

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.

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".

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.

Link

[suede18]

Thats horrible. But is that not typically communist way of responding to "no."

[Penn]

In a similar vain, with reference to property rights, we all are aware that the dispute may not have occured if the public has the right to self defense. This recent article in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/we...rch%207&st=cse

has caused a heated debate among my small and continually shrinking group of acquaintances. The questions are: when is it legal/moral to loot and when is it equally legal to defend your property with force up to and including deadly force.

My position, which I’m paying dearly for, is that looting is stealing, for bread or TV’s , it’s the same proposition. You are taking what doesn’t belong to you; which according to the NYT, in a crisis situation, such as Haiti and Chile are experiencing there is moral “ambiguity” involved with personal needs.

Loaf of bread maybe, but eating TV's? clado que no!

To the point; I accepted that “ambiguity” if the supporters of the right to loot supported my right to defend my property up to and including deadly force.

An excerpt from the article:

Nonetheless, a pattern that now is a cliché of disaster journalism broke out there as well: Early reports of people raiding markets for food and diapers were quickly followed by pictures of people carrying TVs and dishwashers off into a city with no electricity. Intact stores were broken into. A department store in Concepción was set ablaze. In a few places, roving bands robbed anyone they could. Residents who formed self-defense posses were quoted saying that the “human earthquake” was worse than the geological one.

[jatx]

There is no law in China, only authority - and authority is a function of wealth. It's a time bomb.