A villager carrying explosives broke in and detonated during a regular meeting of the Mingjing Village Committee in Hualong Town, Panyu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, China, Monday morning, killing five people and injuring five others on the spot. This is a rare case of “suicidal” homicide against officials in China over the years. Some analysts say that if the growing social tensions are not resolved fairly and reasonably through the law, such incidents may happen again.
Five dead, five injured in explosion
According to the Guangzhou Panyu police late Monday, a criminal case occurred at 10:00 on March 22 in Mingjing Village, Hualong Town. After a preliminary investigation, the 59-year-old suspect surnamed Hu carried a combustible explosive to a building in the village and ignited it, killing five people on the spot, including Hu, and injuring five others. The case is still under further investigation.
After the explosion of the second floor of the village office building video shows that the walls and beams are severely damaged, the ceiling was blown off, debris everywhere, including the stairs and other places on the wall and the ground blood stains are clearly visible, there are injured or dead on the ground, firefighters have entered the scene. Another video shows police outside the building pulling up a cordon.
Voice of America reporters have been calling multiple cell phones and phone numbers in Mingjing Village searched online for several days, but they are all “on hold” or unavailable. A local source in Guangzhou relayed that the police have a tight lockdown on the area where the incident occurred in Hualong Town, making it difficult to get first-hand information. The reporter contacted on Wednesday a person working in the bombed village office building side said that the sound of the explosion was very loud, the police will soon close the nearby highways, roads and so on for a long Time. At present, it is not clear the detailed reason for the detonation.
Netizens comment some people “good” and some worried
There is no official word yet on the cause of the suicide bombing. A screenshot of what is believed to be a social media conversation with a Mingjing village villager was reposted online. The screenshot shows that the incident involved compensation for the expropriation of a fish pond, and that the person who detonated the bomb was tested for liver cancer and “split up” (died together) with the same village cadres. According to the villagers, a total of 16 injured and 7 dead, including the secretary, two senior officials, two captains, two party members. The murderer knew that the party members meeting to bomb, apparently planned and premeditated.
According to an online Cantonese audio presentation believed to be from a villager, there was a man with a bomb strapped to his body, rushing in to blow up. At that time, the party members and village cadres were in a meeting, and they had sold a lot of land to people. Rights for a long time but also can not get, pull the banner and be caught. Currently, the screenshots and Cantonese audio on the Internet cannot be independently verified.
According to Hong Kong‘s pro-China media Oriental Daily News, a Hong Kong resident in Hualong Township revealed that the man surnamed Hu is a retired soldier who took extreme measures out of resentment against village officials for their inaction and suspected corruption. Internet news said that the incident may be related to the Mingjing Village recently launched the old village renovation project.
After the explosion against the officials, some people on the Internet applauded the man surnamed Hu for not hurting innocent civilians or students.
Some netizens said, “Whoever’s fault to go to who is much stronger than the indiscriminate hacking of students,” “dare to attack the government rather than civilians weaker than themselves, this is the real man”, “finally understand ‘Injustice has a head and a master’, not to the road to randomly chop people or to the kindergarten door to vent”.
However, there are some netizens worried about the future of such suicide bombings will increase. Some said that “there will be more and more of these in the future” and that “tyranny inevitably promotes violence. The whole country is a powder keg.
Such incidents are inevitable when petitions are blocked
Zhao Yan, a former China researcher at the New York Times Beijing correspondent station, has organized and participated in a number of petitioners’ actions in the United States in recent years to intercept Xi Jinping and other senior Communist Party officials visiting the United States to seek redress for their grievances.
Zhao Yan said that in the current situation where grassroots people are facing collusion and corruption, the path to petition is basically blocked, and the laws of the Party are unable to provide justice for the people and ease the conflict of interests, it is inevitable that suicide bombings like the one in Panyu will occur.
He said: “In the premise that the law does not work and depends on the eyes of the party secretary to operate, then the emergence of this situation is sooner or later, it is also inevitable. The people are weak in front of the law, and if you want to achieve justice, you have to achieve justice for yourself. Discipline Inspection Commission at all levels of protection of these grassroots corrupt officials is already to the point of destroying the law, beyond repair, before forcing the people have to line and the opposite.”
Zhao Yan also said that the past cases, such as the villagers in Shaanxi angrily killed a Family of village officials is not as alarming as the bombing case in Panyu. With a large number of officials at all levels using their power to erode the rights of the people, if the authorities only want to maintain stability and cover up, and not for the people to resolve conflicts to protect their rights, the confrontation between the government and the people will intensify.
People killing officials happens from time to time
Several major incidents of “people killing officials” have aroused public concern and discussion as the conflict between the government and the people intensified.
On July 1, 2008, Yang Jia stabbed and killed six police officers and wounded four police officers and a security guard at the Zhabei Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, sparking a debate on police violence and justice.
On May 26, 2011, Qian Mingqi, a resident of Fuzhou City, Jiangxi Province, dissatisfied with the compensation for demolition and relocation, petitioned for a long time to complain about his injustice and set off three places, including the Fuzhou Procuratorate, Linchuan District Government and District Drug Administration, resulting in four deaths and five injuries, including myself.
At noon on December 13, 2012, Liuzhou City Planning Director He Bin was killed at Home by a petitioner who blew up, and his wife was injured.
On February 19, 2015, a Hebei youth, Jia Jinglong, killed He Jianhua, the village party secretary and village head, with a nail gun because his wedding house was ordered to be forcibly demolished by the village committee. The case has been widely discussed in Chinese jurisprudence and society for what happened to Jia Jinglong and the determination of the circumstances in the death penalty trial.
And just one day after Jia Jinglong’s execution on November 15, 2016, villager Hei Yanping of Yan’an County, Shaanxi Province, stabbed and killed the village chief and his family over a land requisition compensation dispute, killing four and injuring five.
On March 17, 2017, the incident of Ming Jingguo, a villager in Nankang District, Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, who killed Zhuo Yu, chairman of the township congress, with a sickle shovel for resisting forced demolition, had been a sensation.
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