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10. desember 2005
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The growing unrest in China escalates as residents of a fishing village not far from Hong Kong report a massacre of demonstrators.
The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area in the wake of the heavily armed assault.
"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody.
"Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."
The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on rapid deployment of huge numbers of security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other non-lethal measures. But Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous in recent months over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside, particularly in heavily industrialized eastern provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiansu. By the government's tally there were 74,000 riots or other significant public disturbances in 2004, a big jump from previous years.
Whether this was a deliberate, brutal crackdown by authorities panicked by growing protests, or there was a breakdown in police discipline, it is still an extremely dangerous development.
A small group of villagers was delegated to complain to the authorities about the plant in July, but they were arrested, infuriating other residents and encouraging others to join the protest movement. On Dec. 6, while villagers were mounting a sit-in demonstration, police made a number of arrests, bringing lots of people out into the streets, where they managed to detain several officers. In response, hundreds of law enforcement agents were rushed to the scene. Everybody, young and old, "went out to watch," said one man who claimed his cousin had been killed by a police officer's bullet in the forehead. "We didn't expect they were so evil. The farmers had no means to resist them."
The village is now under siege by military and police.
Gateway Pundit has more.
Chinese authorities have certainly not backed down.
China on Saturday blamed a deadly confrontation between authorities and demonstrators in a village near Hong Kong on "a few instigators" who organized an attack on a wind power plant, prompting police to open fire.
Blame the victims.
It may be, as many predicted, that the economic growth in China prompts people to start demanding more say in the running of the country, at first on a local level. China's communist party, after de facto abandoning its ideology, has attempted to bribe the country into leaving them in power by presiding over unprecedented economic growth. If that plan fails, raw violence appears to be the communist party's plan B.
Quite inexplicably, the biggest massacre in China since the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre is buried and considered quite uninteresting by western media.
8:37:07 PM 
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U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland was apparently on the shortlist for becoming the foreign minister of Norway, but was dropped in favour of Jonas Gahr Støre, being too lightweight for the job with only his UN experience. Unnecessary to say, I'm not a big fan of Egeland, who made the famous "stingy" remark just after the Indian ocean tsunami, and then went on to make daily (at least) press conferences pretending the UN played any noticable part in the actual relief work.
Egeland has just been to Zimbabwe, and I certainly have no quarrel with his harsh words for Robert Mugabe's insane regime. I still have to admit a chuckle as I read Mugabe's personal attack on Egeland.
"He's a damned hypocrite and a liar," Mugabe said in an opening address at his party's three-day annual conference in the western Zimbabwe town of Esigodini.
Mugabe accused Egeland of raising political rather than humanitarian matters, in poor English, when the two met in private Tuesday.
"He is Norwegian, which is why he couldn't speak proper English," Mugabe told more than 3,000 delegates of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front in a two-hour speech broadcast on state television.
Now, keep in mind Mugabe's thick accent when he uttered those words, and it gets really funny.
But the thug has a point. I am frequently embarrassed by various Norwegian diplomats speaking in heavily accented English. I would be tempted to blame it on the eastern Norwegian dialects, not lending themselves easily to English (or anything else), but then I remember Terje Rød-Larsen, who is from Bergen like me, and whose working language is English, and he is still unable to get even remotely close to a proper pronunciation of the English language. I cringe whenever I hear these people speak English in public.
Then again, there is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has lived in the US since the year I was born, and he still retains his famous Austrian accent.
Myself, I tend to copy the accent of the last English-speaking person I spoke to. A few days ago, a Scottish man I met seriously thought I was Australian. My accent is apparently quite Aussie due to some strong influence by a few good friends from down under. A few years back, when I spent a lot of time with Scottish friends, I was sometimes assumed to be Scottish.
3:56:17 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.01.2006; 00:10:52.
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