ZHUHAI VILLAGE (Time Daily News 24/7), March 13, 2008:
In Zhuhai village in Jiangsu province about 125 miles (200 km) west of Shanghai, the farmers knew they were courting trouble. With the help of a Beijing lawyer discovered through the Internet, they filed a suit against local authorities to try to stop what they said was the illegal expropriation of their land for a tourism complex.
Many of the 250 households gave up and left. But the 15 or so holdout families were still unprepared for the appearance of a hundred or more police and demolition workers in hard hats on December 12. They were bundled out of their homes and those who resisted were beaten with clubs and iron bars. Then, as they watched from a nearby hilltop, demolition backhoes clanked up and began attacking the walls of their houses like huge, mechanized woodpeckers. By the end of the day, nothing but rubble remained.
Stumbling blocks: A worker clears the rubble of farmers' homes in Jiangsu province that were razed to make way for a tourism complex Ryan Pyle for TIME"They beat me all over," says a 52-year-old farmer whose voice is still shaky weeks later. He rolls up a leg of his pants to show a three-inch gash on his calf. "They didn't give us a chance to take anything. Not even a pair of chopsticks. Now my wife and I are sleeping on a table in an old folks' home and begging for meals. We have nothing. No land, no house, no money."
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It was Mao Zedong who famously said a "single spark can light a prairie fire." Men like He may not know it, but they are holding burning brands in their hands.
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