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Military Officer Tied to Killings Is Held by China
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By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: December 12, 2005
BEIJING, Monday, Dec. 12 - The commander of paramilitary forces who opened fire on villagers protesting land seizures has been detained by the authorities in connection with the shootings, an extraordinary response that suggested high-level concern over whether the crackdown was justified.
The official New China News Agency said in a dispatch Saturday evening that three people had been killed and eight others injured after security forces shot protesters in the village of Dongzhou in Guangdong Province on Tuesday. Villagers have given varying estimates of the death toll, including some who said as many as 20 people had been killed.
Guangdong's provincial government issued a statement Sunday saying that the "wrong actions" of the commander, who was not identified by unit or rank, were to blame for the deaths. The statement said he had been detained by civilian authorities in the area.
An earlier official account quoting local authorities laid blame for the violence exclusively on villagers. It said local residents, led by three men, first attacked a power plant at the center of a land dispute and then turned on the police, using weapons including spears, knives and dynamite, compelling security forces to put down the insurrection forcibly.
The conflicting accounts suggest continued uncertainty about what happened and may also reflect differing responses by local, provincial and national political leaders.
The decision to detain any commander so soon after a shooting incident is rare in China.
Police and paramilitary commanders have limited autonomy to decide on the use of force against civilians and would generally need high-level approval before opening fire. Even if the commander acted on his own or gave inaccurate information to higher authorities before getting approval, however, security forces would generally be expected to close ranks and defend one of their own leaders rather than accept responsibility for mistaken killings.
It would be especially notable if the detained commander worked for the People's Armed Police, which was reported by villagers to have deployed troops in the area. Civilian government officials generally have no power to detain or bring charges against military officers. In many such cases, President Hu Jintao, who has the top civilian, military and Communist Party titles, might be expected to be consulted before conflicts between civilian and military officials could be resolved.
Since the large-scale killings to put down a democracy movement in Beijing in 1989, Chinese authorities have invested heavily in training and equipping riot police to suppress protests without the use of lethal force. Since that time, shootings of unarmed demonstrators have been unusual.
China had 74,000 mass incidents of unrest in 2004, according an a police tally. While some of them resulted in deaths and a few led to local declarations of martial law, very few involved police or paramilitary troops opening fire on civilians.
The Dongzhou incident involved sustained protests over the construction of a large power plant, which appeared to have coal-fired and wind-driven turbines. Some residents had complained about the amount of money they received for ceding their land to the government for the plant, while others said a reclamation project connected with the wind turbines would hurt fishing the area.
Government officials issued no statements about the shootings until four days after they occurred, leaving villagers to provide their own accounts to Hong Kong and Western media. Local villagers still maintain that a number of people remain missing or unaccounted for, but it is possible the authorities arrested people for participating in the protest.
Several Guangzhou newspapers have had reports about the matter, but national newspapers and Web sites have not even carried the New China News Agency report, suggesting extreme sensitivity on how people will react to the shootings.
Murray Scot Tanner, an expert on China's security forces at the Rand Corporation, said Monday that the detention of a commander could signal fears that Chinese press reports about the incident may not be treated as credible. He said the authorities are highly reluctant to assign blame to police or paramilitary troops and almost never do so. |
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楼主: Charle Z. Song
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发表于 05-12-12 22:14:52
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