Wukan
Wukan ( Chinese 烏坎村 , pinyin Wūkǎn CUN ) is a Chinese village of the road district Donghai (东海街道) the independent city Lufeng the prefecture-level city of Shanwei in the province of Guangdong .
Population and administration
The population of Wukan is given between 12,000 and 20,000.
Economy and Infrastructure
Large parts of the population live from fishing .
In Wukan there is a temple for the regional deity Xianwang .
history
Wukan is said to have been founded around 1600.
Land conflict in Wukan
On September 21, 2011, a land conflict began in Wukan as a protest against the expropriation of the residents by local businessmen and communist cadres .
The situation escalated in December after a detained resident died in police custody. The villagers drove away the police and communist officials; in return, the police cordoned off the village with a siege ring. All access roads were blocked and the coast guard prevented the fishermen from casting off.
On December 21st, the Chinese government sent a senior official to Wukan as a negotiator. At the same time, work began to remove the barricades. As a result, the former village party leader was investigated for unauthorized enrichment and arrested villagers were released. The villagers' negotiator, Lin Zulian, was elected the new village party leader on January 15th.
In February 2012 the residents elected more than a hundred representatives. These representatives proposed candidates for the seven-member village committee, which was elected on March 3, 2012. These were the first free local elections in China. Observers hope that Wukan will become a role model for all of China. At the time, critics feared that these are just tactical concessions that will be withdrawn as soon as the excitement subsides. This fear was not confirmed; in April 2014 the village committee was confirmed in an election.
In June 2016, mayor-elect Lin Zulian was arrested and accused of corruption by senior authorities. He then read a confession on television that he had taken a bribe of 593,000 yuan . However, he later revoked that admission and, according to his lawyer, he was forced to make the confession by the authorities. As a result, protests and demonstrations broke out again in September, but the state authorities violently suppressed them. Nine Wukan residents arrested as part of the protests were sentenced by a court in late December to between two and ten years in prison. In its judgment, the court accused the defendants of, among other things, disrupting public order, obstructing traffic and illegal gathering and demonstration.
Web links
- Wukan: China's Democracy Experiment - six-part documentary by Al Jazeera English , 2011–2017 (video, 150 min. Chinese with English subtitles)
- A village rebels against state power - Report on clashes in Wukan in September 2016
- Lynn Lee: Wukan: The end of a democratic uprising in China . Al Jazeera English, June 10, 2017
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Sven Hansen: Rebel leader becomes local Communist Party leader. In: The daily newspaper . January 16, 2012, accessed January 16, 2012 .
- ^ A b c d Till Fähnders: Behind the barricades of Wukan. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 18, 2011, accessed December 19, 2011 .
- ↑ Fear of a wildfire. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . December 21, 2011, accessed December 21, 2011 .
- ^ An attempt at democracy in China - Wukan fishing village holds secret elections Spiegel Online February 12, 2012
- ^ Voting in China: Mini-election in the village of the rebels Spiegel Online March 3, 2012
- ^ Head of Wukan village re-elected ChinaView, April 1, 2014
- ↑ China Sends 9 Villagers to Prison After Land Protests ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . ABC News (Associated Press story), December 27, 2016
