Authorities in Changping, Beijing, have launched a forced demolition of some homes in Xiangtang Village on Thursday, International Human Rights Day, and the government plans to complete the demolition of several neighborhoods in the village by next Spring, according to online videos and information provided by informed sources.
“Yesterday was International Human Rights Day. The authorities are violently and illegally demolishing our legal houses 50 kilometers from Zhongnanhai in Beijing ……”
This is Yang Yusheng, owner of the fourth neighborhood of Xiangtang Cultural New Village and a professor at the Law School of China University of Political Science and Law. He told this reporter on Friday that just the day before, he witnessed the forced demolition of Xiangtang’s homes by the local government.
“The authorities sent nine large excavators and sprinklers, as well as more than 1,300 security guards armed with shields, to restrict our residents’ freedom to enter and leave the neighborhood.”
Forced demolition officially launched
Yang Yusheng revealed that authorities demolished half a dozen residences in local neighborhoods including Northwest District 9 and District 10 on Thursday. These first buildings to be demolished were divided into three categories, including rough houses with only structural skeletons, houses that were determined to be unoccupied for a long time or not paying property fees after stepping on them, and houses with compensation packages negotiated with the owners in advance.
The professor said he bought a quadrangle of second-hand houses in Xiangtang Village’s Zone 4 in 2016 to live and store his collection of nearly 30,000 books. He pointed out that the quadrangle is the location of the house base in Xiangtang Village, so there is no question of the nature of the land. The Purchase Contract he signed was stamped with the official seals of the village committee and CuiCun town government, and he also has a Certificate of Use of Collective Land for Construction issued by the Changping District Land Bureau, which should be protected by law.
Nevertheless, on the second day of this month, the Cui Cun town government posted a “notice of demolition within a certain period” on his courtyard door, which deemed his house as “illegal construction” without authorization.
According to Sheng Hong, former director of Beijing-based independent think tank Tianzhe Economic Research Institute, who has been following the matter closely, “unauthorized construction” has become a common excuse for the authorities to demolish his home.
“The original authorities generally still have to negotiate with the owners, at most when the negotiation fails to carry out forced demolition, but the authorities still have to compensate, but less than the owners demand. Since the invention of the word ‘illegal construction’, it was determined that your illegal construction means you are breaking the law, so I demolished you for nothing.”
Yang Yusheng wrote to the party secretary and president of China University of Political Science and Law on Wednesday to report the situation to the university, noting that as a veteran teacher with more than 30 years of party and teaching experience, he believes it is clear that the local government is “violating the law and breaking the law”.
He said that on Thursday, the first day of the demolition, he witnessed thousands of police officers deployed, with basically three rows of security guards at the entrance of each hutong, to deter property owners.
Internet video showed a black mass of uniformed law enforcement officers, many carrying shields with the word “riot” written on them, chasing away onlookers.
The video also captures a group of onlookers watching a single villa being demolished in the distance.
“Now Xiangtang Village in Changping District is being forcibly demolished without any compensation and without conscience.”
Yang Yusheng told the station that township officials had communicated with him about the matter, noting that the two sides could coordinate compensation matters after he moved out. And local officials told him personally that the Xiangtang demolition operation was an order pressed down from one level of the Beijing government.
Some neighborhoods may be demolished before the Spring Festival
He also mentioned that among the ten districts in Xiangtang Village, only some of them were posted with demolition notices, while others, including the old villagers’ houses, were not, and he was not sure of the specific reasons for the authorities’ differentiated treatment of different districts. However, he said that the demolition of these posted districts will generally be completed before the Chinese New Year.
When it comes to the government’s disregard for legal procedures and forcible demolition of Heung Tong’s residences, Yang Yusheng could not help but feel a bit emotional. During the interview, he lamented the authorities’ enforcement power in this way.
“In mainland China, as long as the Party and the government want to do something, there is nothing they can’t do. The top fights the sky , the bottom fights the earth and the middle controls the air.”
Guo Lingmei, daughter of “red poet” Guo Xiaochuan, one of the owners of Xiangtang Village and organizers of the resistance to the demolition, reportedly gathered with hundreds of local residents at Changping District Court last week to file a lawsuit against the Cui Cun town government, and then sued out of touch. A detention notice circulated on the Internet shows that police in Changping have placed Guo Lingmei in criminal detention on suspicion of “gathering a crowd to disturb the order of a public place” on the fifth. Guo Lingmei, a writer and director of CCTV news and film studio, wrote a suicide note last year, stating that he hoped to “protect thousands of neighbors in Xiangtang with my blood and my life from being displaced”.
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