Local Party Secretary Receives Life Sentence for Authorizing Villager Shootings

The Handan Intermediate People's Court in Hebei province sentenced He Feng, former Party secretary of Dingzhou city, to life imprisonment for authorizing the shootings of villagers protesting inadequate land compensation, according to a February 9 report by the Voice of America (VOA) and a February 10 report by Ming Pao Daily (both in Chinese). Both sources noted that the court imposed the death penalty on four other defendants, but did not disclose their names. Victims expressed their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the case, and one villager told VOA that authorities had failed to conduct a thorough investigation and punish higher ranking officials who may have been involved.

According to a June 15, 2005, Beijing News article (in Chinese), six villagers were killed and dozens of others injured on June 11, 2005, when 200-300 unidentified assailants, some armed, entered Shengyou village in Dingzhou. The Beijing News was the first to break the story in mainland China, and a video recording of the attack was later posted on the Washington Post Web site. According to a June 15, 2005, Washington Post article, the conflict between villagers and local officials began in the fall of 2003, after the management of a state-owned power plant announced that it would requisition the villagers' land to build a new facility. Villagers complained that compensation did not meet national guidelines and that local officials had embezzled money that should have gone to the villagers. They suspected that local officials had hired the assailants and helped supply them with firearms to use against protestors. The Beijing News reported that on June 13, two days after the shootings, Dingzhou's Party secretary and mayor were removed from their posts. In December 2005, Xinhua (via China Daily) reported that 27 people, including former Party Secretary He, were prosecuted for the shootings.

"Hiring thugs for dirty work has been an important tool of local administration in China," according to a February 16 Asia Times report that analyzed the Dingzhou sentencing. Since October 2005, the CECC has reported on multiple cases of officially authorized violence against Chinese citizens who challenged local government abuse of power. In Taishi village, officials reportedly employed plainclothes security forces to beat local people's congress deputy Lu Banglie when he attempted to examine villagers' failed efforts to recall an allegedly corrupt local leader. In Shandong province, officials reportedly employed plainclothes security forces to beat lawyers visiting activist Chen Guangcheng while he remained under house arrest for exposing the abuses of population planning officials in Linyi city. Officials reportedly were also responsible for attacks by unidentified assailants on registered Catholics protesting uncompensated property confiscations in Xi'an and Tianjin. Additional information about ongoing violence by government officials against ordinary citizens is available through recent NGO reports, including We Could Disappear at Any Time: Retaliation and Abuses Against Chinese Petitioners (issued by Human Rights Watch, in December 2005) and Hazardous Times for Human Rights Defenders: An NGO Report on Respect for and Implementation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights Defenders in PRC (issued by the Network for Chinese Human Rights Defenders and posted via Boxun, in January 2006). Activists and NGOs have used these reports to call on Chinese leaders to investigate and prosecute officials who authorized the violent actions. Article 234 of the Criminal Law subjects those who cause "intentional injury" resulting in death to at least 10 years imprisonment, a life sentence, or the death penalty. Those who cause severe injury short of death are punishable by at least 3, but not more than 10, years imprisonment.

Comments by Chinese officials and domestic scholars during the month of February have raised the question of whether these local incidents are actually part of a larger trend of abuse of police power in China. The Ministry of Public Security announced at a February 14 press briefing that it has suspended 10,034 police officers since 1997 for breaches of discipline. According to a February 15 Beijing News article (in Chinese), investigations into these cases revealed that collusion between police and criminals occurs in some parts of China. Independent Chinese PEN Center president Liu Xiaobo stated, in a February 5 essay (posted by Boxun, in Chinese), "Even though the despicable use of mafia forces ... is, for the most part, behavior engaged in by local authorities, if there were no institutionalized support from a system of dictatorship, local authorities could not become so increasingly brazen. In other words, it is the very acquiescence of central government authorities that allows for local government abuse of power to become increasingly uncontrollable and local government use of violence to become increasingly vicious."