(Ji Ruan parents’ flat is being knocked down by the yellow machine at right side.)
Here I will present an inconvenient truth for Ji Ruan’s family now in China:
- The truth is: Ji Ruan’s parents’ only real estate asset, a two bedroom flat, was completely and illegally knocked down by the local government: Zhuji Municipal People’s Government on 03 December, 2007. Moreover, his mother and grandparents were missing for a few hours. And he was really shocked and worried.
Here are the details collected by Ji Ruan.
As usual, I got up and started to check emails in the morning. Then an urgent email appeared from the screen, dated Dec 3, 2007 5:32 AM GMT, that was 1:32PM in China. It was already 8:05AM. (i.e. 4:05PM in China) I called the friend who sent me the message, and he told me what happened, as follows:
In the morning around 10am, there were 4-5 officials from the Zhuji Municipal People’s Government persuading my mother to sign a contract so that they could knock down the house and building commercial project under the name of Transformation of old city. Our family disagreed on the low compensation that the government offered. So we had been negotiating for a while. And suddenly, there were around 10 people from the government (like secret police) rushed into our flat, and forced my mother and my grandparents to leave the flat. My mother was so unwilling to leave and was crying, but they disregarded it and used violence to put my mother into one car and my grandparents into another car. My mother wanted to get some belongings in the house, but they denied. Soon after, our flat was knocked down with the full building.
This was what my friend saw.
I called my father immediately, and he told me that my mother had already called him. She was OK but without know where exactly she was, and my grandparents were sent back to the countryside where they originally live. The purpose, as told by the officials from the Zhuji government, is to send them to a safe place. My father was very upset as well, but asked me do not worry too much.
I see the Zhuji government is violating the the Chinese laws two ways:
- restrict people’s freedom;
- destroy people’s private properties without permission.
These are not acceptable to my family and the Chinese law.
Later that night, my mother was back, and her throat was a bit hurt because of the violence. The second day, her voice was lost, and I asked her to see a doctor, and she got treatment on our own cost. Her voice is a bit better now.
I bring all these things on my website: jiblog.jiruan.net, and I am sure that the Zhuji government are aware of the problem, but as of 10th December 2007, there is no single government official to my parents temporal flat in suburb, rent in mid July, to apologize or do anything to remedy.
So what is the background? Why would this happen? Earlier this year, our own train station and railways in city center was deserted because of the change of railway course. The Zhuji government came up with a giant project: wipe off almost all the buildings in the city center, together with the railways, to build a NEW city center. They never asked what the residents think, and they never thought of this as a crime to the history of this almost 4000 thousand years old city. There are 3345 families are involved in the first sub-plan. Unfortunately, our house was in this plan. The compensation that the local government offer are very restrictive, and not enough. They basically offer two choices, either take a slightly larger size flat in a locate that far from city center where they promise to finish the building by 2009, or take some money, which, even adding all my parents savings, is not enough to buy a similar second-hand flat in a similar area. Of course, there are not so many residents are happy about this plan. But the Zhuji government organized a 200-person team to persuade the people. They even contacted the headmaster of my high school, and order him to contact me to persuade my parents to sign the contact. It is just ridiculous. We insisted that we want to come back after the new house was built, but they just ignored our request, and destroyed our flat without us signing the contract.
Our flat is not eligible for compulsory purchase, as the project is not for public interests, but for the interests of the Zhuji government and their partners: the local commercial developers.
Then what are we going to do? We decided to sue them. This is not as easy as in UK or Europe, because of the complex (legal) system in China. The local police and judges in local court are all paid by the government, and they stand with the same line of Zhuji government. The local lawyers are so afraid of the government such that they will simply not deal with your case.
We are seeking help outside of Zhuji. I hope that I could bring enough awareness of the whole issue to a broad audience through my blog and any media. As a matter of fact, the visitors to my blog so far are from more than 25 countries. Some people send me very supportive emails. I’ve also talked with the friends around here in Liverpool over the past week, and all of them are very sympathetic and supportive to me and my family.
There are also people asking me to give up. They see no hope to fight for right against the nasty Zhuji government. But I see three core values of my case:
- We will teach the local government that law is serious, and they should have not violate the law.
- Our example will encourage the citizens in Zhuji, further in China, to stand up with courage, and fight for their own legal rights and human rights.
- The Zhuji government’s misbehaver will be restricted as they will see the anger from the people.
Because all these crap things did by the local government, China is now in a bad shape under the fancy GDP growth cover. The inflation rate is over 6.5% of last month compared to a year earlier, and in this year the central bank has raised the interests rate 10 times to 3.87% (year rate), but still people are losing money for the actual negative interests rate. It does affect the Chinese people a LOT, as you can see from this news from BBC: Three die in China sale stampede.
We have to save our own land by fighting back, by telling the government to conform to the law. The Chinese culture tells the Chinese not to be the first say no to the government, as the gloomy past showed them the danger to do that.
Please let me know what you think. It would be great if you could help a bit to passing this message around and I will surely keep updating this blog, and let you informed with the latest progress.
Many thanks to all the people who have provided me support.
Ji Ruan
For more, see: jiruan.net
Department of Computer Science
The University of Liverpool
Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK
Emails: j.ruan@csc.liv.ac.uk ; ji@jiruan.net
Tel: (+44) 151 795 4294
URL: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~jruan
OR simply: http://jiruan.net
