Internet used to oppose forced house demolitions
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By online diary and letter, two Chinese doctoral students used the Internet to protest the forced demolition of their families' houses in rural China.
Meng Jianwei, a doctoral student majoring in microelectronics at Shanghai's Fudan University, and Wang Jinwen, a doctoral student majoring in law at Beijing's Tsinghua University, told Xinhua in separate interviews Thursday netizens' support had helped them.
They hope a just legal system can decide if a farmer opposes his house being demolished to make way for urbanization.
The two doctoral students recorded their two families' experiences through the Internet over the past two months.
Even more disastrous for Meng was that his father met a violent death, fatally beaten by a gang of hired thugs on Oct. 30.
According to a local government report, at 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, a crime was committed in Guzhai Village, Jinyuan District, Taiyuan City, capital city of north China's Shanxi province.
One person, Meng Fugui, was killed and one was wounded while houses were illegally demolished.
Meng, 54, was the father of 26-year-old Meng Jianwei. A gang of more than 10 attacked him to drive him out of his house.
The father supported his elder son's study by selling bean curd. His younger son and daughter had stopped going to school.
The elder son returned to his hometown on hearing of his father's death and demolition of the family home. He then wrote about it on the Facebook-like Chinese social networking site Renren on Oct. 30.
He wrote he could not accept losing his father, who was a strong man in good health.
Meng's first entry garnered wide attention, attracting more than 3,000 readers and 118 supportive responses.
A netizen told Meng the violent acts demolished not only the farmers' houses but also the people's heart.
Meng began writing his online diary everyday to record the case's progress.
On Nov. 2, five suspects were detained. Then on Nov. 9, another 12 suspects were detained. On Nov. 13, five local government officials were removed from their posts or severely punished.
At the same time, senior local government leaders visited Meng's family and promised to punish the criminals.
The the latest diary entry, on Thursday, Meng said he was hesitating on the autopsy issue. He said he was waiting for the outcome of the criminal investigation.
The words "Meng Jianwei" and "demolition" give 68,300 results when searched in Baidu, a Chinese search engine.
There are 13,600 results with the words "Wang Jinwen" and "demolition."
Wang wrote a letter on Nov. 17 to the mayor of Weifang City in east China's Shandong Province, Xu Liquan, after his family's house in Beisanli Village in Weicheng District, Weifang City, was demolished by force early that morning.
Wang questioned the mayor about the legality and rationality of the demolition in his letter, which spread online.
In March this year, the family and other villagers were told their village would be demolished to make way for urbanization, since the city needed to develop land.
But no agreement on compensation was reached, and none of the villagers received official documentation detailing the a relocation program before the houses were demolished.
Wang's online letter triggered heated online discussion, and, under pressure, senior local government officials travelled to Beijing to meet Wang to solve the dispute.
Wang, like Meng, insisted the disputes be dealt with in court.
Wang and Meng said being doctoral students at prestigious universities helped their cause.
They said they are waiting for the law to play to regulate demolition procedures. Because of the absence of law and regulations, demolition has become a source of conflicts in China as the nation urbanizes.
China's home demolition regulations that set national interests above those of the individual were abandoned in 2007, as they contradicted the principles of the Property Law. Judicial experts are working on a draft law.
Experts had blamed land grabs on an inadequate legal environment, saying that without a law, land developers decide compensation and relocation programs as they see fit, causing market disorder and public discontent.
The government should understand farmers' actions to safeguard their interests, said Yu Jianrong, a research fellow at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
The often violent illegal land grabs and house demolitions have been tagged and recorded on Google maps by a blogger who wants the public to boycott the "blood-stained apartments."
The map identifies about 70 forced land seizures since 2003 and is on the popular web portal Sina.com.
