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Chinese People Acting Against Deadly Pollution By MARK MAGNIER Los Angeles Times September 3 2006 HUASHUI, China -- The tents are gone, the protesters have dispersed and the police have retreated to the shadows. But villagers remain in jail, local women are still tending deformed babies, and rage burns beneath the surface. With the spread of pollution-related unrest, a contagious source of instability in the world's most populous country, Huashui stands out as a benchmark more than a year after farmers drew a line in the once-fertile earth. Not only was it one of the largest known protests, with an estimated 10,000 police officers and desperate villagers facing off in a pitched battle in April 2005, but also it proved to be a rare case in which citizen outrage prevailed over deeply vested interests. A few months ago, the last of the area's 13 poison-spewing factories was shuttered. "Without the riot, nothing would have changed," said Wang Xiaofang, a 43-year-old farmer. "People here finally reached their breaking point." China's pollution has long been a focus of international criticism as clouds of toxic air pass over California and polluted rivers empty into the Pacific Ocean. Increasingly, however, China's own people are taking to the streets to demand an end to the birth defects, Technicolor water, dead crops and murky air that are robbing them of their livelihoods and lives. "Environmental problems are increasingly a flash point of rising unrest in China," said Nicholas Bequelin, China researcher with Human Rights Watch. "You're not talking about the size of some woodland or whether to cut old-growth trees. You're talking about life-and-death issues for villagers." In Huashui, villagers may have forced out the factories, but they also have paid a price. Nearly a dozen farmers, including Wang's 40-year-old brother, Wang Liangping, have been sent to prison for as long as five years. And local authorities using spies, wiretaps, intimidation and close surveillance keep a tight grip on the area. As villagers spoke with a reporter in Wang's farmhouse, 10 police officers and local officials arrived. The reporter, along with a villager, was interrogated at the Dongyang police station for nearly three hours, his bags searched, cellphone records examined, notes confiscated and digital photographs deleted before being made to sign a "self-confession." Two local foreign affairs representatives remained with the reporter for the next 15 hours before delivering him to the airport. China saw 50,000 environment-related riots, protests and disputes last year, an increase of nearly 30 percent, according to the state-run China Daily. Many were closely linked to other divisive and equally sensitive social issues, including the nation's growing wealth gap and illegal land seizures by local officials as new developments gobble up the countryside. "This environmental problem has become one of the main factors that affect national safety and social stability," said Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration. Analysts blame a top-down single-party system obsessed with economic growth in which officials are promoted for fulfilling five-year plans, not for listening to citizens. Structural problems also are a factor. Pan's environmental bureau is weak and easily dominated by muscular economic ministries with bigger budgets and more clout. And the salaries of its local representatives are paid by the pro-growth governments they're supposed to be regulating. "Many in government worry about instability if economic growth is not very fast," said Daniel C. Esty, head of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy in New Haven. "But I think instability is a far greater threat from people who find they're being poisoned by the environment." A government study released in mid-July found that 81 percent of the nation's chemical plants were dangerously close to population centers and sources of drinking water. Aware of the problem and the fury it engenders, Beijing recently promised to spend $175 billion on environmental protection over the next five years. Headlines aside, when health and safety violations occur, sufferers have little recourse, making them increasingly desperate. "Local governments are more unchecked than before, and corporations have more and more money," said Lo Sze Ping, campaign director of Greenpeace in China. "And the more corrupt a local area is, the more likely the voices of those affected are suppressed with great intensity. That's where the frustration comes from." There are small signs of change. A few groups have started challenging polluters in court, with modest success. "We're winning more cases," said Xu Kezhu, deputy director of the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which helps farmers file environmental lawsuits. "But it's not easy." Villagers here say they originally adopted a cooperative stance with the government. The first chemical factories, which sprang up around 2001, were welcomed as a source of jobs and economic growth. That view started to change, however, as stillbirths increased and more children were born with deformed limbs, unable to cry or blink or with learning disabilities. As more chemical factories moved in, residents saw a "death zone" expand around the industrial area, killing trees and crops as far away as six miles. "If you ate the rice immediately after harvest, you got a stomachache," said Jiang Yonggen, 44, a farmer. "And vegetables wouldn't grow at all." They also noticed that the foul-smelling gas clouds emitted by the factories at night left their children's eyes glued shut in the morning. But when they raised their concerns with government and factory officials, with their yellow shriveled cornstalks in hand, they were told they must have used too much fertilizer. After four years of excuses, and word that still more chemical factories would be moving in, the farmers settled on a new tack. On March 20, 2005, they blocked the main road leading to the factories with homemade bamboo tents and mounted slogans on the factory walls that read: "Give us back our land" and "We want to survive." They recruited retirees to keep watch on the tents around the clock, telling them to set off fireworks to alert other villagers if local officials showed up. Under China's repressive political system, where a handful of people conversing can be labeled an illegal political movement, local authorities don't take kindly to such a show of defiance. They also have wide-ranging discretion to "maintain social stability." Three weeks later, in the wee hours of April 10, thousands of villagers heard the firecracker warning and came running to defend the barricades. Facing off against them, witnesses say, were an estimated 3,000 police officers and government supporters. When the dust cleared, the police fingered a few "troublemakers," a centuries-old tactic of making scapegoats, villagers say, quoting a Chinese proverb: "killing one to scare 100." Wang Xiaopan's brother was sentenced to 15 months in jail. He is mentally disabled and has an extremely gentle disposition, Wang says, and wasn't even at the tents when the alleged assault took place. Jiang Yinsheng, Huashui's Communist Party secretary, who was named to the post after the riots, says that he has no direct evidence of police misconduct and that the existence of birth problems is not conclusive. "I don't believe the villagers were tortured," he said. "And some farmers aren't well educated and take medicines during pregnancy, so we can't be sure deformed or stillborn babies result from pollution." |