Recent case highlights how shaky are rights to land

Epoch Times
Dec 15, 2009
By Jason Ma

At 6:00 a.m. on Nov. 13 Mrs. Tang Fuzhen, standing on the roof of her three-story house, poured bottles of gasoline on herself. An excavator was breaking her yard’s gate and wall. Meanwhile, local officials in uniform were breaking in the last blocked door to her house’s third floor, where her family, including an infant, stood together crying. She screamed in desperation: “Stop. Otherwise, I will light myself up.”

Nobody stopped. One second later, she became a ball of fire. This happened in Chongqing, a provincial capital 1270 miles south west of Beijing, because the local authorities wanted to take over the land Mrs. Tang’s house stood on to build a new road.

Mrs. Tang was rushed to a local hospital, and died sixteen days later. Meanwhile, four of her family members were also hospitalized due to the beatings they were given by local officials. Ten days later, seven other family members were arrested for “resisting a governmental order with violence.”

During Mrs. Tang’s last days in the hospital, the local authorities denied her family the chance to visit in order to prevent the news of what had happened from spreading out. Thanks to a segment of video shot by one of Mrs. Tang’s neighbors using his cell phone, the media finally learned of this incident three weeks later.

After the Chinese media reported on this story, the local authorities released an official report. According to the report, Mrs. Tang’s 17,222 square foot house was built in 1996 to use as both her residence and the site of her factory. In August 2007, when the local authorities planned to build a road across the land, Mrs. Tang’s family demanded a compensation of US$1.17 million based on the market value of the land and house.

The local authorities, however, claimed Mrs. Tang’s house was an “illegal” building because she had failed to obtain one of the necessary building permits when she built the house in 1996. Citing this reason, the authorities only agreed to compensate the family for the cost of building the house over ten years ago, which amounted to $117,000.

When negotiations reached a deadlock, the authorities first tried to evacuate the family and bulldoze the house on April 10. That attempt was stopped when Mrs. Tang threatened to self-immolate. The break-in on Nov. 13 was their second attempt. They were so determined to get the job done this time that they refused to believe Mrs. Tang really dared to set herself on fire.    more …