T-Salon: What's happening in Taishi Village?

Photo via Wozy's photostream, originally published in Nanfang Weekend.
"80-something-old grandmother Feng Zhen got up on a pile of rocks in her bare feet and gave a speech against the many things that village committee director Chen Jinsheng did during his term. July 31st 2005." --ESWN

Simon World notes: "What happened in Taishi was incredibly significant but it has not been widely reported in the Western media. Why? Because the Western media are effectively barred from reporting it, through violence and threats.

It was just shocking to read Guardian's China correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Waltth's eye witness account on how an activist was ~~almost~~ beaten ~~to death~~.

"We arrived on the outskirts of Taishi, just as the dirt roads start. There were 30 to 50 men - angry, inebriated, bored men. Most looked like thugs. Some wore military camouflage uniform. Some wore blue uniforms with badges on the shoulders, and one guy had a greyish-mauve uniform with a walkie-talkie..." Warning: the account is gruesome. But please read the whole thing.

Update: The activist, who was reported as dead is alive. Via Boston Globe: The Voice of America reported that Lu said in an interview yesterday that he lost consciousness during the beating and didn't wake up until the next morning. He said doctors told him he had no major injury, but he said he was in pain and dizzy."

From a RFA report I read a couple of days ago, where an activist said:

“Without even the tiniest amount of power-sharing, there is no hope at all that ordinary citizens will have their basic rights protected. China’s rural communities make up 80 percent of the population, but in terms of political power, it’s really less than 10 percent,” she told RFA’s Mandarin service.

“Why has a tiny village election in Taishi escalated to this stage? Because the authorities have remained implacable in the face of support from academics, from journalists and the legal profession,” said Hou, an activist with the Beijing-based Empowerment and Rights Institute.

“They won’t budge an inch, because there has been no change, not even a small adjustment, in the structures of power,” she said.

Replying to Hou, Beijing Institute of Technology economics professor Hu Xingdou said central government had to tread a delicate path with local officials: “I think the government has its own problems. For example, local governments are the grassroots of the Party, and it can’t afford to alienate them entirely.”

“But in the case of such obvious violence and wrongdoing as we saw in Taishi village, I think the central government should use its power to intervene,” Hu said.