As the year comes to a close, and media attention shifts elsewhere, we should all pause for a moment to remember the Dongzhou killings. As bad as this tragedy was, it was only one of many instances of injustice inflicted upon the powerless in China. Take this story, which ran in quite a few US newspapers in the last few days:
BEIJING (AP) - Police on Wednesday blocked a Chinese family from holding a news conference in Beijing to publicize complaints of police brutality in their village.
Members of the Feng family invited reporters to a Beijing hotel but said police from their home province warned them against doing so. Two family members and another villager were questioned by Beijing police and prevented from leaving their hotel.
Stories like the Fengs' are becoming more common in China, where police abuses are reported frequently and the communist government tries to control information. Hundreds of people travel to Beijing each year to file complaints and often write to reporters.
They also underscore the tense situation in many Chinese villages, where residents complain about collusion between police and local officials in offering allegedly unfair compensation for land requisitioned by the state for lucrative construction projects.
Earlier this month residents of the village of Dongzhou in southern China's Guangdong province clashed with police over land seizures for a power plant. The government said three villagers died when security forces opened fire on protesters. Villagers say the death toll may have been as high as 20.
By the government's count, China had more than 70,000 cases of rural unrest last year, and protests are growing more violent, with injuries on both sides.
I guess the silver lining here is that, even though the powers-that-be tried to suppress the Fengs, their story got out anyway. Compare the repression and violence and arrogance of the CCP response to Dongzhou, and so many other Chinese villages, to the actions of the South Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun, when faced with a public demonstration gone awry:
President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday apologized for the deaths of two farmers presumably caused by a clash with police during rallies.
"It is a deeply regretful matter. I bow my head and apologize," Roh said in a news conference at Cheong Wa Dae.
"Public power must be controlled and exercised only in a calm and collected manner and therefore holds a heavier responsibility," Roh said, pledging to reprimand the people responsible, make appropriate compensation for the victims' families and prepare measures to prevent similar cases.
The farmers died last month and this month while undergoing treatment for injuries from their collision with police during a demonstration against the government's opening of the rice market.
Why is it that the South Korean president can publicly apologize but the Chinese president cannot? Democracy is the difference. And until China begins a more serious democratization, there will be more Dongzhou tragedies.
Geez, you keep blundering around in areas that you've already been warned are minefields.
Roh - I call him "The Great Pretender" in deference to his not very subtle Lincolnesque ambitions - conducted a great bit of very cynical political theatre, nothing more.
The farmers in question are guys who attacked policemen with metal pipes and bamboo staves the size of naginatas - a pretty common occurrence in Korean demos - and got their comeupppance; usually it's the cops who get sriously injured or killed, while the perps spend a few days in jail.
In this instance, however, there's some general pubic sympathy for farmers, whose 5 times the world price for rice incomes are threatened by Korea's ten year belated and extremely limited move to comply with its WTO obligations by very partially opening its rice market (8% available to foreign imports, whose prodicut can be used only in processed foods, etc. not direct consumer sales.
Even more importantly, this is a very powerful litmus test issue for the core consitutuency of The Great Pretender and his party, both of whom have experienced dramatic losses in public approval - both because of the mercantilist protection of the farmers and their emotional need to keep beating up on those public institutions most assicated with the cri,es of the authoritarian regimes of 15+ years ago.
So I'm sure that Roh personally feels badly about the farmers' death, but his public posturing as Good Confucian is phony and politically manipulativ.
Posted by: Sperwer | January 02, 2006 at 05:42 AM
I don't doubt that South Korean democracy can be manipulated. All democracies are open to corruption and power struggles: witness the current string of scandals over influence-peddling in the US. For all of that, however, democracy - compared with authoritarianism - offers relatively powerless people more of a chance to protect themselves from tyrannical abuses of power. Roh has to apologize to farmers because he has to worry about votes, not just farmer votes, but other votes as well. That is more than Chinese farmers have.
Posted by: Sam | January 02, 2006 at 08:34 PM