Human Rights in China (HRIC) has received an urgent appeal from 650
people resettled as a result of the Three Gorges Dam project. The
group, led by Fu Xiancai, has asked HRIC to deliver a petition to the
relevant United Nations bodies in hopes that the international
community will assist them in obtaining appropriate compensation.

The group, which was resettled from Maoping Township, Zigui County,
Hubei Province, told HRIC that their leader, Fu Xiancai, is at imminent
risk of detention because of his activism on their behalf. Fu has been
representing this group since the 1990s in their negotiations with the
authorities for an improvement to what they consider unreasonable
compensation terms. Fu has been detained and interrogated on a number
of occasions, and is regularly subjected to threats and harassment. At
the end of September Fu went on another trip to Beijing to petition on
behalf of the group, but was detained by police and escorted back to
Hubei. HRIC’s sources say the authorities are now building up a file
against Fu and are coercing others to testify against him.

According to the resettled villagers, an agreement signed by
then-Premier Li Peng originally promised the villagers compensation of
a minimum of 56,000 yuan per mu of land, and that they should be paid
compensation for a period of 15 years. In actuality, the villagers say,
local officials paid them only 1,408 yuan per mu, and they received
compensation payments for only one year. The government had also set a
resettlement payment of 30,000 yuan for each villager, but they only
received 5,000 yuan. Their living and housing allowances had also been
severely discounted, the villagers said.

The petition claims that the villagers have suffered losses totaling
more than 2 million yuan, and that their living conditions under
resettlement are greatly inferior to what they originally enjoyed.

The resettled residents have petitioned various levels of the
government dozens of times since the 1990s, and have also applied for
the case to be accepted by the courts, with no success. During that
time, leaders of the group have been repeatedly subjected to
suppressive action by the local government; dozens have been detained
and interrogated, and two (Gao Qizhang and Yang Xingfu) have been
imprisoned, while another (Ma Deyang) has been sentenced to Reeducation
Through Labor. This past May five petitioners, Wang Xidong, Liu
Zhengzhen, Xia Chenghu, Wu Yansheng and Qin Wenjun, were detained and
are currently awaiting sentencing.

HRIC urges the Chinese government to refrain from suppressive action
against these villagers as they exercise their lawful right to appeal
for their rightful compensation. “HRIC will be transmitting the
villagers’ petition to the relevant UN bodies and foreign governments
in hopes that pressure from the international community might be
brought to bear on this matter,” said HRIC president Liu Qing.