Taking to the streets against forced evictions, residents in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China achieved a rare victory by forcing the regime’s local cadres to apologize.
The conflict was triggered on the afternoon of April 9 in the Baijingfang, Xiacheng district when staff members of the Hangzhou Urban Management Bureau (also known as chengguan) came to remove posters and banners which had been publicly posted by local residents in protest of forced relocation.
Madame Yan, a local resident, told The Epoch Times that the conflict could be traced back to October 2009 when the relocation department posted notices that they would evict residents from the area. Local residents believe the evictions are illegal and applied for an administrative review, and the decision is pending.
As forced relocation is very common in China, and residents are often the victims of government-backed violence, local residents felt threatened and responded by covering the official notices with their own posters and banners, thus triggering a poster war between the two sides. Tensions were escalating.
Yan commented on how the local residents were quite angry about the chengguans’ “clean up:” “Residents say the regime has TV stations, newspapers, and other media to promote their agenda, but they can only express their grievances on the wall.”
The conflict was triggered on the afternoon of April 9 in the Baijingfang, Xiacheng district when staff members of the Hangzhou Urban Management Bureau (also known as chengguan) came to remove posters and banners which had been publicly posted by local residents in protest of forced relocation.
Madame Yan, a local resident, told The Epoch Times that the conflict could be traced back to October 2009 when the relocation department posted notices that they would evict residents from the area. Local residents believe the evictions are illegal and applied for an administrative review, and the decision is pending.
As forced relocation is very common in China, and residents are often the victims of government-backed violence, local residents felt threatened and responded by covering the official notices with their own posters and banners, thus triggering a poster war between the two sides. Tensions were escalating.
Yan commented on how the local residents were quite angry about the chengguans’ “clean up:” “Residents say the regime has TV stations, newspapers, and other media to promote their agenda, but they can only express their grievances on the wall.”
