Police disperse 2,000 anti-dam protesters in western China

Police disperse 2,000 anti-dam protesters in western China
Posted By Christina Larson Friday, April 1, 2011 - 2:47 PM Share

"Now all the roads are cleared," a 30-year-old woman from the county of Suijiang, in China's southwest Yunnan province, told the Wall Street Journal. "There are military police patrolling the streets to avoid people gathering together." After five days of heated protests -- which had drawn 2,000 people to the streets -- a tense silence was being enforced. On Tuesday, 400 paramilitiary officers had descended on tiny Sujiang to disperse demonstrators.

The villagers had gathered to protest government plans to build a major hydropower station on the nearby Jinsha River. Approximately 60,000 people are slated to be relocated by the dam, but many villagers either don't qualify for government compensation -- or feel that the amount offered is far too low to replace their lost livelihoods.

Over the next decade, expect many more dams to be built in China, as the country seeks to meet rapidly growing energy needs. As Peter Bosshard wrote recently in FP, China's National Energy Administration is likely to soon approve further hydropower projects totaling 140 gigawatts -- in comparison, he notes, "the United States has installed just 80 gigawatts of hydropower capacity in its entire history."

Protests over land seizures and low compensation are not uncommon in rural China. (More than 50,000 such "public disturbances" are counted by public security bureaus each year.) But the recent Sujiang demonstration attracted particular national attention, in part because snapshots (see above) of paramilitary forces arriving in armoured personnel carriers were distributed widely through Sina Weibo -- a popular Twitter-like microblogging site that remains accessible in China, for now.

Chinese Mental Health asylums

Poem

This poem is from the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith novel. I am putting it on the blog because it truely shows the nature of the struggle for human rights. Please take it seriously and read it too the end. If you dont read it to the end, you wont get the point of the poem.

The dark is generous.

Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truth of others.

The dark protects us from what we dare not know.

Its second gift is comforting illusion: the case of gentle dreams in nights embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in day's harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it is day that is temporary.

Day is the illusion.
Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self.

Which each victory of the light, it is the dark the wins."

"The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins.

It always wins because it is everywhere.

It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow."

"The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins-but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars."

I have also placed a video, at the bottom of the post, of the poem if you would just like to listen to it.

Missing Before Action

Due to the revolutions in the Middle East, the Chinese government has been detaining prominent human right activists and lawyers to ensure that they do not rebel. Here is a list of a few

1.Over the weekend, the prominent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has been vocal about human rights abuses in China, was detained at Beijing Capital Airport.

2.Another blogger and activist targeted by police is 31-year-old Gu Chuan, a signer of Charter 08 and a protégé of Liu Xiaobo. Gu was taken from his home by police on Feb. 19 and has not been heard from for more than 40 days. During this time, police have visited his wife, who is nursing a baby and taking care of a toddler, to pressure her to urge her husband to quit activism. She has refused. Following orders from the police, her landlord has recently canceled her lease, leaving the family in dire straights.

3. Ran Yunfei, a prolific 46-year-old writer and signer of the pro-democracy tract Charter 08, has been held in detention since Feb. 20

4.) Tang Jitian, a human rights lawyer, was taken away by police on the evening of Feb. 16. He had just eaten lunch with a dozen other activists who were discussing how to provide assistance to the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, now under house arrest in Shandong province. Tang's residence was searched.

5. Hua Chunhui, 47, is a cyberactivist and midlevel manager at an insurance company in eastern Jiangsu province. He was seized by police on Feb. 21 and detained on suspicion of "endangering state security." Hua, using the Twitter account @wxhch64, has tweeted messages about the "Jasmine Revolution." Hua and his fiancée Wang Yi have been active in civil society initiatives in recent years