[kraken] VERZET IN CHINA TEGEN AFBRAAK HUIZEN

Auteur: zoe koppelaar <oladio@hypocrisy.org>
Datum: 09 apr 2004 11:33 uur

effe wat anders: Kameraden Luo Jichun en Feng Shaonian komen in China in opstand tegen overheidsspeculatie en afbraak betaalbare woningen.

VERZET IN CHINA TEGEN AFBRAAK HUIZEN

Uit: The Wall Street Journal Europe (pro-Bush zakenkrant uit US), 23 maart 2004

"Even as China's economy continues to roar ahead, pressure for political change grows. The push comes not so much from high-profile dissidents but from people we rarely hear of: a small-town lawyer who sues the
government on peasants' behalf, an architect who champions dispossessed homeowners or a woman who tries to expose police brutality. Some are motivated by narrow
interests of family or village, others by idealism. All, successful or not, are sowing the seeds of change in China, helping to foment a slow-motion revolution from below.
In 'Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China' (Pantheon Books, today) Wall Street Journal correspondent Ian Johnson profiles some of these
grassroots activists, all of whom have taken advantage of China's rudimentary legal system to fight for their rights.
Two of these are Luo Jichun and Feng Shaonian, who were part of a citizen's group that sued the Beijing municipal government for confiscating their homes and selling the land at a huge profit to developers. Over the past decade, millions of people across China have suffered this fate, but the situation is especially pronounced in Beijing, where huge swaths of the old
city are being leveled in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. In the following edited excerpt, Messrs. Luo and Feng hold forth on the law and public opinion in their 'office' - the upper level of a KFC fast-food
outlet in Beijing's old city.

Luo Jichun and Feng Shaonian had been brought together by personal tragedy. Both men's homes had been confiscated in 1994, when China was amid an economic bubble and investment poured into real-estate projects. Growth rates for the national economy were double-digit and new buildings went up daily. The boom was driven by easy money lent by state banks. Everybody seemed to have the same idea: build concrete and glass highrises in the
center of town. For dozens of cities like Beijing, that meant getting rid of the residents and leveling homes. In Beijing, many of the homes dated back 600 years to the Ming Dynasty.(..)
[De actiegroep had een eigen boek laten drukken] What was especially striking was the use of color photos. (..) One showed Messrs. Feng and Luo and five other representatives of the 23,000 residents standing before
the Beijing Municipal Second Intermediate People's Court holding the complaint.
Another showed them presenting the case to an official, while another focused simply on the stack of 23,000 signatures. The back covers hinted at what prompted the lawsuit. One snapshot showed a bulldozer leveling an
old brick home; another showed an old woman in the rubble of her home, leaning sadly on a tree that used to be in the center of her courtyard. The back cover was even more revealing: people's belongings strewn through the rubble, a sign that they hadn't left voluntarily. Another showed crowds confronting riot police who were protecting the workers as they went about destroying the homes."

Jan Paul Smit - jpsmit@xs4all.nl

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ontvangsttijd Fri Apr 09 09:33:36 2004