A remaining building in the neighborhood is being demolished by an excavator on Jan. 6, 2021.
The demolition of the Jiuhua Agricultural Science Demonstration Park in Xiaotangshan, Beijing, which lasted for nearly two months, has now reached its end. on January 8, some owners of the community told the station that the houses in the community had been basically demolished, leaving only a dozen households and dozens of people remaining. In the face of the demolition crew, some residents resisted and were injured. Some of the owners are now seeking to claim compensation from the government through legal means.
It has been nearly two months since the Jiuhua Agricultural Science Demonstration Park, a residential community in Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District, Beijing, was razed by authorities. On November 17 last year, hundreds of men in black, consisting of triad members and farmers from outside the area and employed by the local government, forcibly occupied the subdivision. Since then, the men in black have destroyed the neighborhood’s natural gas station and have been gradually demolishing residential homes in the area since Nov. 25. By the end of December, half of the neighborhood had been demolished, leaving only 200-300 of the original 2,100-plus residents of the neighborhood remaining. As the community was cut off from water and electricity, those left behind had to cut wood for heating and cooking in the cold winter. Despite the hunger strike protest by the stayers and some of them had a scuffle with the black-clad people, they could not stop the black-clad people from advancing step by step. Our reporter has followed up the process of this incident several times before.
On January 8 this year, the reporter contacted some of the owners of the community once again to find out the current situation in the community.
Video: In early January 2021, a neighborhood owner drove through the neighborhood and filmed the patches of debris created by the demolition crew. (Courtesy of the plot owner, exclusive premiere)
Mr. Zheng, a subdivision owner, told reporters that the entire subdivision has been demolished, leaving only a dozen households and dozens of holdouts guarding the few remaining buildings in a last-ditch struggle. On the night of January 6, the local temperature had fallen to about minus 20 degrees, only logging for heating the situation is very difficult for those left behind. In the demolition of buildings where there was resistance, the demolition crew used “human tactics” to make it difficult for the stayers to resist effectively. During the clashes between the two sides, some of them were injured.
Mr. Zheng said, “In particular, a famous lawyer named Yang Wu, an intellectual property lawyer, had five or six people in their house, but more than 200 black security guards came and tried to carry them out one by one. They refused and fought with the black security guards, and they were arrested at the police station, and now they don’t know what happened to them. All carried out, two hours to demolish their houses, came to more than a dozen hookers (excavators).”
According to the pictures provided by Mr. Song, the owner of the district to the reporter, in some of the remaining buildings, the people left behind in black ink on the walls wrote a number of protest slogans, such as “today to demolish my house, tomorrow to destroy China”, “the contract is not a waste of paper”, “the law is to protect the interests of the people”, “is not illegal construction, there are red chapters, there are contracts” and so on.
Protest slogans written on the walls by those left behind in the district. Photo taken on January 8, 2021. (First published by RFA courtesy of the plot’s owners)
Mr. Song revealed that his neighborhood was razed, most likely because the local government had sold the land in the neighborhood: “It is said that the government has sold the land to a company for development, for tens of billions of dollars.”
In the district owners’ network group, a homeowner surnamed Wan, whose home has been demolished, said his family’s grandchildren have invested in the district, and he himself was involved in the development of China’s imported food “new crown” virus testing standards. As a person who has contributed to China’s epidemic prevention, he has explained the demolition to the local district and town governments, “but without any results”.
Mr. Song, on the other hand, said he has now left the district and will next use legal means to demand compensation from the government: “This matter is definitely not over, because we had an agreement and a contract with the Land Bureau of Changping County Government at the time. And it was (with) a land certificate, a promise that the lease would remain unchanged for 50 years, and a one-time payment of rent. Now only 20 years have passed, what about 30 more? Now all our property is just demolished, this lawsuit is definitely to fight, we definitely want to talk about compensation.”
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