China Town Sealed After Protesters Slain

[PatrickHenry]

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...&w=APO&coview=

Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 20 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, according to villagers and a newspaper report Saturday. If that death toll is confirmed it would be the deadliest known use of force by security forces against Chinese civilians since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989, and marked an escalation in the social protests that have convulsed the Chinese countryside. During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant. Police fired into the crowd and killed a handful of people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. Villagers' accounts of the death toll ranged from two and 10, with many missing. On Saturday, Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper raised the death toll to nearly 20, citing villagers. There was no explanation for the discrepancy. Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd - as the military did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, when hundreds, if not thousands, were killed. State media have made no mention of the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media and lower-level authorities are leery of releasing information without permission from the central government.

Stealing land and killing protestors. This is what happens when states grow too powerful. Then the information about the "incident" is "managed."

[Nono]

I think many Chinese would argue that it isn't so much a problem of the state being too powerful but of a powerful state that lacks political legitimacy. The present government is manned by a gang of ideologically bankrupt hangers-on who have no compunction about doing whatever they need to do to maintain power.

What we hear in the Western media is only the tip of the iceberg.

[US Independent]

China murders protestors and tries to cover it up, and they are still in the UN. That shows that UN is a waste of time. It is too bad that our government doesn't have the balls to make outsourcing to China illegal. Of course if that happened Walmart would be ruined and we would have an economic slump as well but at least we would have destroyed China.

It is not the Chinese people that are at fault but the Chinese government and military. One plan would be to liberate them through war or have the crappy UN get tough on their tail. Either way it will be a hard fight to win.

I hope the Chinese people are not discouraged by these murders. I hope that the Chinese people continue to press for more freedom and a better government.

[oranged]

Cutting off from China at this point would hurt the American economy more than the hurt the Chinese. Now they have trade with Canada and Europe. I think the UN should crack down on them, possibly expel them. Sanctioning them from all member nations could help, too.

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: oranged Cutting off from China at this point would hurt the American economy more than the hurt the Chinese.

Well, the first thing it would do is shut down WalMart, so I don't think that'll happen.

Now they have trade with Canada and Europe. I think the UN should crack down on them, possibly expel them. Sanctioning them from all member nations could help, too.

As long as the entire world is in on this, I'm ok with it. I don't really think Bush would bother with China, seeing as it would be a REAL opponent but you never know.