JayAtl
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/w...ht-for-homes-suicide-is-ultimate-protest.html
As she drove down a busy four-lane road near her old home, Tang Huiqing pointed to the property where her dead sisters workshop once stood. The lot was desolate, but for Ms. Tang it lives.
Four years ago, government officials told her sister that Chengdu was expanding into the countryside and that her village had to make way. A farmer who had made the transition to manufacturer, she had built the small workspace with her husband. Now, officials said, it would be torn down.
So my sister went up to the roof and said, If you want to, tear it down, Ms. Tang said.
Her voice trailed off as she recalled how her sister poured diesel fuel on herself and after pleading with the demolition crew to leave, set herself alight. She died 16 days later.
Over the past five years, at least 39 farmers have resorted to this drastic form of protest. The figures, pieced together from Chinese news reports and human rights organizations, are a stark reminder of how Chinas new wave of urbanization is at times a violent struggle between a powerful state and stubborn farmers a top-down project that is different from the largely voluntary migration of farmers to cities during the 1980s, 90s and 2000s.
Besides the self-immolations, farmers have killed themselves by other means to protest land expropriation. One Chinese nongovernmental organization, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, reported that in addition to 6 self-immolations last year, 15 other farmers killed themselves. Others die when they refuse to leave their property: last year, a farmer in the southern city of Changsha who would not yield was run over by a steamroller, and last month, a 4-year-old girl in Fujian Province was struck and killed by a bulldozer while her family tried to stop an attempt to take their land.
As she drove down a busy four-lane road near her old home, Tang Huiqing pointed to the property where her dead sisters workshop once stood. The lot was desolate, but for Ms. Tang it lives.
Four years ago, government officials told her sister that Chengdu was expanding into the countryside and that her village had to make way. A farmer who had made the transition to manufacturer, she had built the small workspace with her husband. Now, officials said, it would be torn down.
So my sister went up to the roof and said, If you want to, tear it down, Ms. Tang said.
Her voice trailed off as she recalled how her sister poured diesel fuel on herself and after pleading with the demolition crew to leave, set herself alight. She died 16 days later.
Over the past five years, at least 39 farmers have resorted to this drastic form of protest. The figures, pieced together from Chinese news reports and human rights organizations, are a stark reminder of how Chinas new wave of urbanization is at times a violent struggle between a powerful state and stubborn farmers a top-down project that is different from the largely voluntary migration of farmers to cities during the 1980s, 90s and 2000s.
Besides the self-immolations, farmers have killed themselves by other means to protest land expropriation. One Chinese nongovernmental organization, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, reported that in addition to 6 self-immolations last year, 15 other farmers killed themselves. Others die when they refuse to leave their property: last year, a farmer in the southern city of Changsha who would not yield was run over by a steamroller, and last month, a 4-year-old girl in Fujian Province was struck and killed by a bulldozer while her family tried to stop an attempt to take their land.
