Online suicide threat leads to land review
By Zhang Xuanchen |
November 16, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A DRAMATIC online suicide pact by 16 farmers who face losing their land has prompted authorities to investigate a planning dispute in Zhejiang Province.
The farmers posted their story on local online forum Nhzj.com and nationwide social-networking site Tianya.cn, claiming they would kill themselves this Saturday unless the government helped.
To show they were serious, the group included telephone numbers, ID cards and, most chilling, scanned red handprints, which the farmers claimed were their seals in blood.
Their plea has received a large number of visits and comments since it was posted earlier this month.
Now the case is to be reviewed, though officials would not comment.
Some 200 square kilometers of land, where the farmers grew potatoes and taros, has been laid to waste in preparation for building a residential complex, a court, a school and several factories in Ninghai County, Ningbo City.
The land's owners, who spent their lives working the land and planned to pass it on to their children, said their lives were also destroyed the day the bulldozers descended last November, reported local Youth Times yesterday.
One farmer, Hu Aiguo, told reporters they were offered compensation of 20,000 yuan (US$3,011) for each mu - or 666.67 square meters of land - much lower than the amount that the village committee promised other farmers who knew its officials.
Hu said the farmers had protested at county, city and province level without any effect in stopping construction.
The farmers posted their story on local online forum Nhzj.com and nationwide social-networking site Tianya.cn, claiming they would kill themselves this Saturday unless the government helped.
To show they were serious, the group included telephone numbers, ID cards and, most chilling, scanned red handprints, which the farmers claimed were their seals in blood.
Their plea has received a large number of visits and comments since it was posted earlier this month.
Now the case is to be reviewed, though officials would not comment.
Some 200 square kilometers of land, where the farmers grew potatoes and taros, has been laid to waste in preparation for building a residential complex, a court, a school and several factories in Ninghai County, Ningbo City.
The land's owners, who spent their lives working the land and planned to pass it on to their children, said their lives were also destroyed the day the bulldozers descended last November, reported local Youth Times yesterday.
One farmer, Hu Aiguo, told reporters they were offered compensation of 20,000 yuan (US$3,011) for each mu - or 666.67 square meters of land - much lower than the amount that the village committee promised other farmers who knew its officials.
Hu said the farmers had protested at county, city and province level without any effect in stopping construction.
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