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DAM-L SCMP "Last chance for the damned" (fwd)
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Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:46:14 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: SCMP "Last chance for the damned"
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Friday, September 29, 2000
Last chance for the damned
Jasper Becker
++
Unsettled: Wen Dingchun, left, and He Kechang have secured copies of documents they allege show their local party officials are raking money off farmers' compensation payments for relocation. Picture by Jasper Becker
From his canvas travelling bag, He Kechang slowly pulled out a large bundle of documents and carefully peeled away the protective layers of newspaper. "Look," he declared. "Everybody signed, even if only with their thumb prints."
Perching his spectacles on his nose, he lifted one petition after another from the bundle, precious testimonies to about four years of confrontation with state authorities over the amount of compensation he and his fellow farmers will receive for being relocated to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project in Sichuan province.
The local farmers - who are among the 1.6 million people expected to be resettled - claim they are not getting their promised compensation for land and orange orchards that will be lost due to flooding. They are demanding to see official policy documents because they believe the local authorities are pocketing a large slice of the resettlement funds allocated by Beijing.
But the local party officials have been trying to stop the farmers going over their heads, and have allegedly detained and threatened some of the farmer representatives.
Mr He and his associate, Wen Dingchun, small wispy men whose stunted frames bear witness to generations of malnutrition in their remote Sichuan villages, seem undaunted by the struggle ahead.
Last week, the two men circumvented the travel restrictions imposed by their local party bosses and went to Beijing, queueing hopefully outside the offices of the State Council, the Three Gorges Resettlement Bureau and the Chinese Central Television's (CCTV) investigative programme Jiaodian Fangtan.
"We were not well received by the first two government organisations but CCTV told us to wait," Mr Wen said. "We hope they will send journalists to investigate."
The two men, elected by villagers in Gaoyang township, Yunyang county, from where 13,000 will eventually be moved, have tried to get local journalists to report their grievances and have appealed to every kind of higher authority, including the Central Disciplinary Inspection Committee.
"We have to do something, otherwise it will get worse in the next three years," Mr He said. By 2003 the Three Gorges Dam will be finished, the central element in Beijing's plan to build the world's largest hydro-electric power scheme. The resulting reservoir will begin to fill up, drowning farmland and villages clustered along the narrow banks on the Yangtze River's tiny tributaries.
Mr He, 68, worked as a production team leader for 24 years, enough to give him a grasp of China's bureaucratic maze. "The officials in Yunyang county are very bad. They don't care about the party's resettlement policy, they only care about how to line their own pockets."
Several violent clashes have taken place this year when farmers demanded to see documents and question officials. Despite alleged threats by some local officials, the farmers have managed to get copies of official documents which they hope will show how the resettlement funds have been skimmed.
Mr He and Mr Wen claim that Gaoyang officials inflated the size of the local population by 2,000 so they could pocket the compensation themselves. Mr Wen has a list of names from one village which he claimed showed how officials added the names of relatives or friends.
The farmers also allege that the officials inflated the amount of land to be submerged by about 40 hectares, thereby collecting 4.2 million yuan (about HK$3.9 million) for themselves, and that they exaggerated the costs of construction work for new buildings to make a similar amount.
The Gaoyang Resettlement Bureau insisted there had been no misconduct. A spokesman said: "We have obeyed the orders from the central Government and so far there haven't been any farmers appealing for help from the central Government.
"We haven't issued any false certificates to migrants and the county inspection commission has sent many investigation teams here and has found nothing."
One of the petitions alleges that when Guling township Party Secretary Tan Heping hosted National People's Congress Chairman Li Peng and showed him a new village built for those being relocated, only five out of the 126 new buildings were actually set aside for displaced farmers. The others were constructed for show.
The farmers believe some local administrations have formed unions with the local underworld. One group of villagers from Guling claimed one of their representatives, Li Weidong, was knifed by gangsters at the behest of party officials, after he ignored threats to stop trying to petition Beijing.
One petition claims: "Officials are co-operating with the local mafia to make false reports on the population. There is a secret policy for controlling migrant permits."
While some villagers are being moved to new land within the same area, others are being transferred to new provinces. More than 160,000 are being moved out of the Chongqing locality to 11 different provinces.
Mr He alleges that officials had abused their power to demand bribes of up to 3,000 yuan to issue the individual permits that allow farmers to be given new land and housing outside their home district. "Some farmers wanted to get their money in advance, and officials provided false documents for a fee," he said.
For farmers in this region who earn far less in a year than the national average of 1,900 yuan, the promised compensation of 30,000 yuan per head represents a bonanza - just as the government subsidies are a rare opportunity for local officials to get rich.
Mr Wen said: "To get the most out of the farmers, officials have been changing position as often as possible. In Gaoyang, the top four posts have been rotated so that everyone can make the maximum profit."
The Gaoyang Resettlement Bureau claims that much of the unrest is based on a misunderstanding of the compensation policies. "According to [resettlement regulations], when we move farmers in groups to other provinces, we should pay 30,000 yuan per person," the spokesman said. "So when we moved 161 farmers to the Chao Hefu district in Hubei province, we paid the local government directly. We paid 25,000 yuan per person [to the government]." The remaining 5,000 yuan per person was apparently paid directly to the farmers.
"We don't pay individuals if they move out of the district on their own. If someone gets in touch with friends and settles down at their place, we will not pay anything."
Many petitions claim that the farmers are only receiving 10,000 yuan or less in compensation. The farmer representatives say the first resettlements have gone badly wrong, with farmers sent as far away as Xinjiang or Hainan Island returning to Sichuan.
"The migrants are treated as second-class people in their new provinces," said Mr He. "They are often bullied by local residents and officials. Some are detained by local police, even though they have done nothing." Instead of receiving money, they are asked to pay as much as 15,000 yuan to relocate.
A group of 300 sent to Zhanjiang in Jiangsu province returned because each received only 9,000 yuan to build new houses. Last week, another group of 300 farmers sent to Tao Fu state farm in Hubei province returned to Gaoyang. They assaulted the local resettlement bureau officials, accusing them of embezzling money earmarked for the construction of their new homes.
Unable to afford new housing on the state farm, they returned to Gaoyang and became angry when they discovered their original homes had already been pulled down.
The protests which have rocked the area and the growing level of violence as the deadline approaches risk undermining international support for other dam projects.
Beijing is striving to make the Three Gorges Dam project a national showcase as it moves ahead with new large-scale dam schemes and other projects requiring the movement of large populations.
Five years ago a World Bank report - Resettlement and Development - hailed China's resettlement policies as exemplary and praised the public consultation process employed.
With billion-dollar loans from the World Bank and other lenders for pending large-scale engineering projects in the pipeline, China is keen to burnish its reputation. The stakes for local farmer leaders such as Mr He and Mr Wen, who dare to speak out, are higher than they might realise.
Jasper Becker (jasper@a-1.net.cn) is the Post's Beijing bureau chief.
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