Criminal Defense News

Three Gorges Activist Faces Paralysis After Brutal Assault

Human Rights in China (HRIC) has learned that Three Gorges resettlement activist Fu Xiancai is being treated for serious injuries following an assault by an unknown assailant. Sources in China told HRIC that on the morning of June 8, Wang Xiankui, leader of the security squad of the Public Security Bureau in Zigui County, Hubei Province, called Fu in for a discussion about an interview he had recently provided to German public television station Das Erste. While Fu was walking home after the meeting, an unknown person struck him from behind with a heavy object, leaving him unconscious on the side of the road. Approximately half an hour later, a passerby saw Fu and called for emergency assistance. Fu was taken to the hospital, where X-rays determined that his neck had been fractured. Fu is currently paralyzed from his shoulders down and has lost control of all bodily functions except his ability to speak.

Since the local hospital lacked the resources to perform the necessary surgery on Fu, he was transferred to the No. 1 People's Hospital in Yichang City. However, surgery is being postponed because Fu is still suffering from a fever. An additional threat to Fu's recovery is a lack of financial resources, as his family has only been able to scrape together 7,000 yuan out of the estimated 80,000 yuan needed for surgery. According to HRIC's sources, hospital officials have stated that all medical treatment for Fu will be stopped if his family cannot come up with more money. Sources say authorities have been trying to prevent news of Fu's assault and injuries from getting out. Police officers have been placed on 24-hour watch outside of Fu's hospital room, and only his immediate family members have been allowed to visit him. Someone reported the incident to the German journalist who had interviewed Fu, but when Das Erste's Beijing correspondent arrived at the hospital with a photographer, police barred them from entry.

Sources say Fu was interviewed by Das Erste in May for the program "A Celebration of the Construction of the Three Gorges Dam," which was broadcast on May 20. Sources say that PSB security squad leader Wang Xiankui warned Fu Xiancai that this kind of "oppositionist" interview "would not have good consequences," and that he could easily send Fu off to Reeducation Through Labor at any time. Sources say Wang also warned Fu of possible negative consequences to his family.Since the 1990s, Fu Xiancai and others who were forcibly resettled for the Three Gorges Dam project have been petitioning provincial and state authorities over the resettlement terms and compensation. In many cases, villagers have not only been resettled on land greatly inferior to that of their original homes, but have also been deprived of the compensation promised to them by corrupt local officials. These cases are so common and well-documented that they constitute a systemic abuse that should be addressed by the central authorities. However, the central government continues to turn a blind eye to abuses against Three Gorges villagers and victims of land grabs throughout China, with the result that rural discontent is increasingly becoming a destabilizing factor nationwide.

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	Did You Know?
	Res Ipsa Loquitur - Literally, "a thing that speaks for itself." In tort law, the doctrine which holds a defendant guilty of negligence without an actual showing that he or she was negligent. Its use is limited in theory to cases in which the cause of the plaintiff's injury was entirely under the control of the defendant, and the injury presumably could have been caused only by negligence.