A Chinese homeowner has become a national cause celebre for holding up a major property development in southwest China in a three-year battle to protect her house.
Wu Ping's (吳平) modest two-story brick dwelling in Chongqing is now one of the most recognizable homes in China thanks to widely circulated pictures of the structure sitting defiantly in the middle of an excavated construction pit.
A court-set deadline for her to relent passed on Thursday but the 49-year-old Wu, dubbed the "stubborn nail" by Chinese media, vowed to fight on in a case that has highlighted the widespread property disputes in China.
PHOTO: AFP
"I'm not stubborn or unruly, I'm just trying to protect my personal rights as a citizen. I will continue to the end," Wu was quoted as saying in the state-run Legal Daily yesterday.
After accepting compensation offers from the builders of the planned residential complex, 280 households have moved out.
But Wu, who now lives elsewhere because of difficulty accessing her home, has not budged even as bulldozers excavated the site around her.
A legal battle has raged since she rejected the compensation offer as she has maintained that she cannot be forced to move out.
A local court ordered her to allow the structure to be torn down by Thursday, although she continued to refuse and it was not immediately clear what steps authorities would take next.
Property disputes are rife in China, often involving illegal land grabs by developers in collusion the government.
The national parliament passed a landmark law solidifying private property rights this month partly to combat such disputes.
Wu's case has generated wide discussion in the media and Chinese Web blogs.
"If this case of the `lonely island' persists, it could become a landmark test for Chinese law," an editorial in the China Youth Daily said yesterday. "If the government does not respect people's rights in the case, it will raise suspicions about the entanglement of civil rights, property development and government interests."
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS