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Elder arrested in protest against eviction of Beijing’s centuries-old village

蘋果日報 2020/12/15 15:50


Residents of the 500-year-old Xiangtang Village in Changping District of Beijing have been resisting demolition since last week. An elderly woman in her seventies has been arrested for disrupting public order in the protest.
Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School and now a dissident, revealed on Twitter that local authorities are determined to knock down the site as the feng shui of the village is considered inauspicious to President Xi Jinping.
Cai has retweeted messages from local villagers who seek help as they remain in a standoff with the authorities. “Some have written to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, while some have raised emergency suggestions to the central and Beijing’s local government,” she wrote.
Acting on orders from last year, a huge number of officers have entered the village, while the local court has issued eviction notices that affect more than 3,800 households.
Most of the residents are middle-aged or elderly, who have poured their life savings into building their own homes, where they intend to spend their retirement. The village, however, has been classified as illegal construction and is now facing demolition.
A woman named Guo Lingmei has been detained since Dec. 5, according to a detention notice widely circulated online. Guo is reportedly a veteran producer at the Central Studio of News Reels Production and the daughter of Guo Xiaochuan, a well-known Chinese poet who worked for the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party and deputy secretary of the China Writers Association.
Yang Yusheng, a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, is on a hunger strike to protest the forced eviction. He said his house had been cut off from water and electricity supplies since last Sunday afternoon.
Tao Siliang, daughter of former Politburo member Tao Zhu, is also reportedly a resident of the centuries-old village.
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