People Are Risking Lives to Protect Their Rights

The CCP claims that the situation of human rights in China “is the best in history.” Two more cases prove that such statements are very far from reality.

by An Xin

Man harassed for protecting his property

Cai Hesheng is a farmer in his sixties from Liushui town in Pingtan county, administered by Fuzhou, the capital of the southeastern province of Fujian. He used to make a living selling the fruit from more than one thousand trees he planted several decades ago.

In 2018, without Mr. Cai’s approval, the town government sold his orchard to a developer, and an excavator was hired to destroy the fruit trees.

Having lost their only source of income, Mr. Cai’s family applied to get compensation from the state but were refused. During that time, three ancillary buildings that belong to the family were destroyed on orders from local officials, supposedly to give way for road construction. The demolition left Mr. Cai with an additional loss of 30,000 RMB (about $ 4,300).

Attempting to protect his legal rights, Mr. Cai appealed to the county and provincial governments, but both ignored him. He later went to Beijing to petition the central government twice but was intercepted by Liushui county officials. The second time, government employees and four hired thugs forcefully took him into a car and beat him until he passed out. Thinking that he was dead, the group drove Mr. Cai to a remote place and dumped him there. A local villager took him to a hospital, where Mr. Cai was told that his six ribs, the nose, and infraorbital bone were broken. He also had bleeding in his brain and eyes, which has resulted in a partial vision loss.

When the family reported about his beating to the police, they not only did not look for the culprits but also defined his injuries as “minor.”

Mr. Cai’s persecution didn’t stop. On November 26, 2019, the local police detained Mr. Cai. Nine days later, Fuzhou city’s anti-riot brigade dispatched more than 500 personnel to demolish Mr. Cai’s house. Only then was he released.

Villager severely beaten

On January 29, 2019, law enforcement officers violently beat some residents of a village in Gangcheng town, administered by Guigang city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

According to a source, 50 armed officers, sent by the city’s Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Layout Construction, came to the village to tear down a house under construction. One of the workers on site started protesting but was attacked by the officers. Seeing this, other workers and some residents attempted to intervene on her behalf, but the officers attacked them as well. Even passers-by were not spared.

Video: Law enforcement officers are beating villagers.

One of the beaten villagers recalled that he was passing by and had no idea what was going on, as an officer gave him three heavy blows with an iron baton on the head. “I felt my head going numb. I grabbed it with my hands, and immediately felt blood streaming down the neck,” the man remembered. “Those officers were totally inhumane; they were beating whoever was passing by.”

At least 11 passers-by were violently beaten. A villager in his fifties had his left arm fractured; another was severely battered and later diagnosed having brain damage and fractures in both shoulder blades and a rib. An octogenarian had to have ten stitches on his head. A group of officers attacked a man in his thirties because he criticized them for hitting old people and women. The man was beaten until he passed out, but the officers didn’t stop. They knocked his head with bricks until it was bleeding. The man only regained consciousness after spending over 24 hours in the hospital.

Video: A villager in his thirties was knocked unconscious.

The injured villagers appealed to the government, demanding justice and compensations. All their attempts have been ignored. The villagers then wanted to submit their case to the Public Security Bureau, but officials there refused to accept it.