Three Gorges Probe
January 15, 2001

A central China settlement was put under official guard for months after villagers protested the destruction of their homes, as part of a local government plan to rebuild the area to accommodate Three Gorges dam migrants.

During the August, 2000 protest, 19 residents living in a Shuanghe Village settlement area in Kaixian County known as Group 8*, were seriously injured by soldiers called in by local officials to control the situation; 28 villagers were also detained – four of whom remained in custody. Since the protest, to ensure word of the villagers’ plight does not get out, police now screen everyone entering Group 8. Outsiders who try to gain entry, but who give unsatisfactory answers under questioning, are likely to be beaten and villagers are threatened with punishment if they attempt to seek help.

The Group 8 protest is a result of a government plan to relocate the Kaixian County seat, displaced by the Three Gorges dam, in four villages in the county’s Sima Township – an area that includes Shuanghe Village’s Group 8 and Group 7 settlements. The move means demolishing the area and rebuilding it to accommodate the relocated seat and a portion of the 110,000 migrants also displaced by the dam – one tenth of the total Three Gorges resettlement population.

Representing the most affected county in the Three Gorges reservoir area, the Kaixian government in April, 1999 forced 70 per cent of the Group 8 settlement – located 50 kilometres away from the Yangtze River – to demolish their homes and share the remaining 30% of homes left standing. The arrangement, enforced without villagers’ consent, packs several families at a time into each available house. Unlike primary migrants (those directly displaced from their homes by dams) the Group 8 villagers as secondary migrants (people who must accommodate the resettlement of primary migrants in their communities) were not awarded compensation, and no provisions to give them replacement land or shelter were made.

Two Three Gorges migrants, part of an underground migrants’ network that meets regularly to share information and plan collective actions, managed to interview a Group 8 resident they identify as Liu. Liu told them that villagers had asked their local government for compensation and to officially recognize them as secondary migrants but the requests, made on three separate occasions, have not been responded to.

According to Liu, in August, 2000, construction workers led by the vice-secretary of the Communist Party, arrived in the area to force construction of the relocated county seat. Locals objected and their arguments were later reported to the local district authorities as an “organized peasant riot.” When the government of Wanzhou district, where Kaixian County is located, learned of the “riot,” armed Wanzhou police and Kaixian County soldiers were ordered to Group 8 to disperse the villagers.

Village men who managed to escape official retaliation by fleeing the area dare not return to Group 8, which has since been classified as a prohibited zone cordoned off from the outside world. The county government has issued stern warnings to remaining locals, saying that anyone who appeals to higher authorities for help will be caught and “locked up.” Said Liu:

“Officials can decide whether people live or die. Without the survival rights, we dare not tell anyone our real names. We will face terrible disasters if the county government knows we talk to you. Both of you are entrusted with a task and you are audacious persons to see us. But you are very lucky. We are being watched by people assigned by the county government. If found out, the outsiders will be beaten up first and then inspected. We all are lucky this time… Please pass a message to higher authorities…”
With migrant numbers rising as construction on the Three Gorges dam continues, the issue of secondary migrants has become a critical one. The use of violent force in the case of Group 8 is not an isolated incident: Yunyang County officials have threatened to punish migrants who refuse to move and make way for the Three Gorges dam, or who accuse local officials of wrongdoing and seek help.

According to the recent report by the World Commission on Dams released in November, 2000, adversely affected people must be given the chance to “negotiate mutually agreed, formal and legally enforceable mitigation, resettlement and development entitlements.”

* In rural China, villages are often divided into numbered groups – the updated equivalent of production teams, the lowest level in China’s now defunct people’s commune administrative hierarchy. Since the mid-1980s, most teams were replaced by groups.

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Three Gorges Probe welcomes submissions. However, it is not a forum for political debate. Rather, Three Gorges Probe is dedicated to covering the scientific, technical, economic, social, and environmental ramifications of completing the Three Gorges Project, as well as the alternatives to the dam.

Publisher: Patricia Adams Executive Editor: Mu Lan Assistant Editor Lisa Peryman ISSN 1481-0913