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China's Rising Tide of Protest Sweeping Up Party Officials
A villager in Xiachaoshui, who identified himself only by his surname, Yao, explains the assault on hillside mining sites.
(Edward Cody - Twp)
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Repeated complaints to government officials brought no response, villagers complained. "One month passed, two months passed, half a year passed, and still they did nothing," said Yao Mude, 38. The villagers planned an assault. One of the organizers was Long Tianbao, a former village party secretary and village council member. Another was the town accountant. The current party secretary and council leader stood aside, villagers said.
One villager, who identified himself only by his surname, Yao, said the crowd amounted to about half the village's 1,000 residents by the time it got moving at 10 a.m. on May 9. Nearby villages joined in as people moved toward the mountainside.
The villagers, now amounting to nearly 1,000, rushed into the mining sites shortly before noon, using hammers and shovels to tear down tarpaulin shelters and smash the washing and sifting equipment used to separate molybdenum from the dirt.
As they attacked about 200 mining sites spread over two hillsides, the police chief from the nearby town of Minle, Shi Xiabin, showed up, shouting for them to stop. Yao recalled that he shouted back, "We are helping you guys solve a big problem."
By midafternoon, the destruction stopped, although hundreds of other sites still dotted neighboring hillsides. Tired and still angry, the farmers moved on to Minle, hoping that now their complaints would be taken more seriously.
The farmers told two deputy mayors that more sites would be destroyed unless the mining operations were shut down within a week, Yao recalled. The officials responded by calling the farmers examples of "Three Nothing-Left," an insulting reference to Japanese soldiers during World War II whose policy, Chinese say, was "kill until nothing is left, burn until nothing is left and loot until nothing is left."
By the end of a long shouting match, however, the officials said they understood the farmers' anger. As a sign of solidarity, they offered to use the town anti-poverty fund to finance a late lunch. The farmers, hungry after a long day of trashing the mining operations, readily agreed. They dispersed to several restaurants, they said, where about 500 in all sat down to eat on town hall's tab.
Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.
