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China keeps tight lid on shootings in Dongzhou

When the police raked a crowd of demonstrators with gunfire last December in the seaside village of Dongzhou, a few kilometers from Shanwei, Chinese human-rights advocates denounced the action as the bloodiest in the country since the killings at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.

Villagers said at the time that as many as 30 people had been killed, and that many others were missing. The authorities have said little or nothing about the episode, concentrating instead on preventing any accounts of it from circulating widely in the country. In the limited coverage that was allowed, officials blamed the unrest on the villagers.

Six months later, there has been no public investigation of the shootings. Instead, the government has quietly moved to close the matter, prosecuting 19 villagers earlier this month in a little-publicized trial. Seven were given long sentences after being convicted of disturbing the public order and of using explosives to attack the police. Nowhere in the verdict is there any mention of the loss of life.

Death toll uncertain

Outside court, villagers say, the authorities have privately acknowledged the death of three residents during the protest. Many say they suspect that more were killed, citing a witness account of a pile of bodies, and details about people who remain missing, but they say they have been warned not to cite a higher figure.

Indeed, residents of the village say they have been warned not to talk to outsiders. Given the fact that journalists, lawyers, human-rights workers and other independent observers have been kept away from Dongzhou, a definitive death toll may never be established.

Whatever the lingering uncertainty, the handling of the protest and its aftermath stand out as a prominent example of how China deals with localized unrest, which has been rising in the countryside.

The protest erupted over plans for a wind-power plant that used village lands and required landfill in a bay where the people have for generations made a living fishing. Before that, nearby village land had been used for the construction of a coal-fired power plant.

But that is not the story that Beijing wants the world to hear. Dongzhou, it seems, has been consigned to the annals of forgettable minor incidents rather than the milestone it undoubtedly is in the wave of unrest over land issues that has swept the Chinese countryside.

Tapped phones

Even six months after the deaths, pressure to deny the truth remains intense. In dozens of telephone conversations and in interviews with the handful of villagers who were willing to slip away from home and risk speaking with a foreign reporter here, residents say their telephones are tapped, and entry and exit from their village tightly controlled. One phrase, "We are scared to death," was repeated over and over.

"My phone is tapped, and our conversation is being monitored," one man said hastily before hanging up. "The police may arrive even while we're still talking. I can say I don't think the villagers are guilty at all. What we did is try to regain our lawful rights over the land."
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