Grandmother Buried Alive in China for Defending Home (Sky News)

Again the Chinese government is shameless and hypocritical in hiding the facts about their own local government officials making sure the murder of a grandmother protecting her home against the property developers would go unnoticed by the Chinese people while the foreign media knows all about it.

The following happened according to Sky News:

A 70-year-old grandmother in China has been beaten and buried alive by property developers trying to take possession of her land.

Wang Cuyun from Hubei Province was struggling with workmen trying to tear down her house and was allegedly beaten by a worker wielding a wooden stick.

She was dumped in a drainage ditch that ringed her property and a bulldozer covered her with earth, burying her alive.

Witnesses said three policemen were present to supervise the eviction but did nothing to intervene or protect her.

One man told Hubei Television that policemen had "stood around acting like it was none of their business".

The death of Mrs Wang is the latest in a long series of assaults, intimidation and violence carried out by property developers in their efforts to obtain valuable land for development.

Developers often team up with local government officials in carrying out the evictions and then splitting the profits from the sale of the land.

The death of Mrs Wang was confirmed on the local government's website: "Wang Cuyun,a villager from Maodian received an accidental injury at a local demolition site on March 3," said a notice.

Since Friday all news reports on the Chinese internet about Mrs Wang have been censored.

Maybe Israel and China can work together, as they both have great pleasure in murdering anyone who refuses to leave their home.

[edit on 9-3-2010 by MightyAl]

You understand property developers are privately held, right ?
This woman was killed on private interests. The state is censoring the news but has begun an investigation and arrested a number of people says the article.
Welcome to Corporate China, a paradise on the rise.

Originally posted by Manouche
The state is censoring the news but has begun an investigation and arrested a number of people says the article.
Welcome to Corporate China, a paradise on the rise.

Of course they have.

They probably arrested everyone suspected of helping make this news public.

We have sick people running this world.

reply to post by Kailassa


To clear it up, I was not at all defending the Chinese governement

I posted because I felt the OP was emphasising on the censorship and on the corruption of the local officials which is fair but appeared to me to neglect to point out who the murderers were and the reason for the murder.
As westerners, we tend to criticise China for its government very much but we forget to find fault in the methods of the fast-expanding private sector. We are still thinking in outdated patterns.
If China is becoming a corrupt fascist corporate-all-powerful state, that's scary.

China is under heavy censorship but I don't know if they have arrested people for making the news public. They can simply erase the news in the blink of an eye. Arresting people would only galvanize resistance.

reply to post by Manouche

They can simply erase the news in the blink of an eye.

Are they going to hack into Sky, yahoo and ATS and delete the pages....

reply to post by john124


How stupid I am ! I forgot how Chinese public opinion was highly influenced by Sky, Yahoo and first of all ATS. Sorry

reply to post by Manouche


Yeah, I saw that, but are local governments also privately held? And what about the police watching her being killed without making a move? Now that the news is spreading, the government is forced to investigate, but still they are making sure the news is censored - maybe to avoid an uprising?

Such kind of things happen everyday in China due to fast growth and greed of capitalists. I don't know if this very incident was censored or not,
I can find many pictures about similar incidents on Chinese search engine
image.baidu.com...
If you only focus on negative news of China, China is hell
If you only focus on positive news of China, China is heaven
A mature observer knows how to get objective image about this most
complicated country through all these news.

I stated it, I thought, clearly from the beginning, Corporate China, government owned by private interests. I am not sparing the government, national and local, from criticism. I spelt it, corruption of officials and police.

What strikes me is that employees of a private company beating and burying alive an old woman , when reading the OP, seems a lesser offence than the shameless and hypocritical hiding of the facts. You couldn't find that many adjectives to describe this hideous murder

I was a little shocked, it looked like a general rant about centralised governement and missing the obvious.

The part I'd want to know is what is the name of this company that hires thugs and buys officials to handle business affairs. There are very big and powerful real estate companies in China. I am disappointed it's not in the article.

Local officials and police have been corrupted for decades, it's a plague. The central governement has never controlled local governments. Chineses know their local officials are generally corrupted, they don't need it to appear in the news, they already know. Now that business is more free and because the central government can't control anything, it's getting worse and worse for the people because of the widespread corruption.

By saying that the government is forced to investigate, you seem to assume the central government supports these practices. Me, I don't know, certainly there are people with different minds in China leadership, I don't know.

Censorship is a tool for general control but it won't prevent an uprising provoked by one event. Thousands protested says the article, the news can spread locally very efficiently despite disappearing from the local news. Against who the people would be angered according to you ? Was it a national news and it was censored or was it a local news that was censored locally ? The article doesn't say.
Sadly, it's only a new added case in a long list of similar events that occured in the later years, I mean violence towards relocated people who don't want to leave.

I take some of the information here with a pinch of salt. It happened on the 3rd, it was censored on the 5th and the western medias publish it on... the 9th. Can someone explain ? I thought it was the information age.
China is of the worst countries for free press, there is no doubt about it, I have no difficulties in believing the news was censored but are our western medias reporting this news with total objectivity concerning the governement reaction ? I don't know.

reply to post by gs001


Thank you gs001
We are not well informed of the horror of the relocations occuring in China and the terrorisation of the people.
Expropriation and expulsion of one's land is of the worst events that can fall on the head of an individual.

The Chinese govt. are traitors to the revolution. They have sold their soul for a dollar. Shame!

Originally posted by Manouche
I stated it, I thought, clearly from the beginning, Corporate China, government owned by private interests. I am not sparing the government, national and local, from criticism. I spelt it, corruption of officials and police.

I know, I'm not saying that you are defending the Chinese government. Rather than making statements, I should be posing them as questions, as China's system is very difficult to understand.

What strikes me is that employees of a private company beating and burying alive an old woman , when reading the OP, seems a lesser offence than the shameless and hypocritical hiding of the facts. You couldn't find that many adjectives to describe this hideous murder

I was a little shocked, it looked like a general rant about centralised governement and missing the obvious.

Sorry, if my OP gave you that feeling. I thought the obvious and the worst was already visible in the article, and I also put it in the title of my OP. The part about China censoring it was just something I wanted to mention on the side, but happened to appear in my first sentence. Of course my biggest disgust is in how they murdered and buried the old woman in such a macabre and barbarian manner. (Just decided to add in some adjectives, as you said I couldn't find any...)

The part I'd want to know is what is the name of this company that hires thugs and buys officials to handle business affairs. There are very big and powerful real estate companies in China. I am disappointed it's not in the article.

Either no one has a clue yet, or China knows but they won't tell, maybe because the central government has connections with the ones responsible. Who knows? Maybe we'll find out more later...maybe not.

Local officials and police have been corrupted for decades, it's a plague. The central governement has never controlled local governments. Chineses know their local officials are generally corrupted, they don't need it to appear in the news, they already know. Now that business is more free and because the central government can't control anything, it's getting worse and worse for the people because of the widespread corruption.

Hu Jintao did admit that it's very very difficult for the central government to control such a large country with so many different ethnic cultures. In that case he should stop considering ownership of Tibet and Taiwan :-) (I live in Taiwan). Anyway, yeah, I think the news should have already spread quite a bit before it was censored. So what's the point of censoring it? Generally, I think China's economy grew so fast, that China's civilisation was not able to adjust to it fast enough. So despite the booming economy, China still remains China as it always has been. This is also apparent in Taiwan, but at a lesser level of course, as we only have 23 million people here, of which most are able to adjust to fast economic growth.

By saying that the government is forced to investigate, you seem to assume the central government supports these practices. Me, I don't know, certainly there are people with different minds in China leadership, I don't know.

I just assumed there was a direct relationship between the central and local governments, but from what you say, it may not be the case. I just thought that logically the government should be working on a centralised hierarchical level, but China is not so logical.

Censorship is a tool for general control but it won't prevent an uprising provoked by one event. Thousands protested says the article, the news can spread locally very efficiently despite disappearing from the local news.

Yeah, but I was thinking about the people who live in other parts of China who probably have no clue about this murder ever happening. No one's going to protest except for the witnesses and those who live in the town where the old woman was murdered. The rest of China won't give a hoot, because the majority doesn't know it ever happened.

Against who the people would be angered according to you ? Was it a national news and it was censored or was it a local news that was censored locally ? The article doesn't say.

As you and I both already agree, what we are most concerned about is the murder, so those responsible for the murder and the police who did nothing to save her should be blamed. Regarding national/local news being censored by either the local or national government, we don't know. You're right, the article doesn't say.

However, according to the Telegraph

all news reports about Mrs Wang were censored on the Chinese internet on Friday.

I don't think the local government can influence the Chinese internet to that extent.

In the article they also said

The government has said it is aware of the growing, and often middle-class, anger against forced evictions, and is currently drafting new regulations that will protect homeowners. In particular, the government has said that property developers must not force residents out of their homes by beating them or cutting off the water and electricity supply.

So at least the central government admits that it's a problem that is trying to be solved. So there's a plus for them, but the problem is that on this side of the world, the government leaders always make false promises, and I think not just here.

After all, I don't think the home demolitions in Beijing in preparation for the Olympics were not related to the central government. So why should we believe what they say.

Anyway, I think there's a high chance that the property developers are connected to the mafia, which would explain why the police was afraid to stop them as they'd be risking their lives. It would also explain the government's response.

Thank you for the Telegraph's article, at least it has a pen name and is from a journalist living in China. It's an interesting article.
I can't comment on the censorship, if there was, how it works, etc... I believe our medias are self-censored too, that's how far I can get.