In March, the Songjiang District People’s Court ruled against the couple, saying that while water samples taken a year earlier were contaminated, air samples were up to standard. The court said there was no connection between the pollution and the children’s diseases, citing a district disease control and prevention centre (CDC) investigation that showed mortality and malignant cancer rates in Lu’s village were actually lower than the district average ….

Lu said the courts had been “shameless” in accepting authorities’ evidence as the air was only sampled four months after the waste collection centre closed ….

On the mainland, tens of thousands of environmental conflicts break out every year, but fewer than 1 per cent end up incourt, domestic media report, and very few of those cases succeed.

Some judges have even told media that they wanted to find polluters guilty, but could not do so because of “tremendous pressure from outside the court”.

Ma Yong, a legal campaigner from the All-China Environment Federation, said that suing polluters was difficult on the mainland because plaintiffs had to prove the contamination was the sole cause of their problems.

Even when compensation is awarded, the amount is often paltry. Paul Mooney describes the story of a Hunan man whose daughter died at the age of five of suspected heavy metal poisoning.

As Liu Guian describes his daughter’s illness, his face darkens. He says that on July 17, 2006, his wife noticed their four-year-old daughter’s eyes were swollen. He describes visits to a string of hospitals that gave different diagnoses. One suggested chronic cadmium poisoning. According to local media reports, cadmium found in her urine had risen to twice the minimum recognised as poisoning. Heavy metals damage both the kidney and the liver ….

The factory denied responsibility, claiming it had the proper environmental certification. However, a court ruled against the company and awarded the Liu family 6,037 yuan [US$946, compared with medical costs of over $14,000] for Bingjie’s death, saying the cadmium poisoning was 5 per cent of the cause.

Liu Lican, [an independent environmental researcher in Guangzhou] who says there may be more than 400 “aizheng cun”, or “cancer villages”, in the mainland, says the compensation offered to Bingjie’s family was insufficient and “just coffin money”.

And this case represents a rare success. More often, according to Liu Lican, “Villagers are told they can’t do anything to those factories because they’re legal …. They have no resources or power to fight with. They just can’t afford to go to court or to petition.”

Frustration at the effective blockage of official channels can drive people to drastic alternative measures. The Los Angeles Times recently noted the availability of hired “medical disturbance” gangs who besiege hospitals until compensation for e.g. the death of a relative is awarded. While greedy opportunism may lie behind the practice in some cases, it is often a means of circumventing a legal system which offers little hope of redress. Via CDT:

Zhang Yuanxin, an Urumqi-based plaintiffs’ lawyer, said it was difficult to sue for medical malpractice, even in the most egregious cases, and that tempted people to take matters into their own hands.

“This is the direct result of the lack of rule of law and the lack of a well-established social welfare system,” Zhang said. “Conflicts like these are inevitable and there will be many more if people can’t solve their problems through the law.”

Last Friday, a Beijing surgeon suffered serious injuries at the hands of a former patient whose case against the hospital had fallen into a legal limbo. From Global Times:

Xu Wen, 43, a chief physician in the hospital’s otolaryngology department, was stabbed over a dozen times, the Legal Mirror newspaper reported on Friday.

“The left biceps were slashed, the bones were exposed, nerves and tendons were damaged, the right forearm was fractured, and she was gashed on her left leg and forehead,” said the newspaper ….

According to a caing.com report Friday, the suspect was a calligrapher named Wang Baoming, who was angered by an alleged case of medical malpractice years ago.

Wang claimed on his blog that Xu had operated on his throat cancer but that it was “not done completely and thoroughly,” leaving him unable to speak, smell or work after two operations. Wang said he had also sued Tong-ren hospital for 17 million yuan ($2.63 million) in compensation, but that his case had been adjourned indefinitely.

In the most extreme recent case of frustrated violence, Qian Mingqi carried out a bombing attack in Fuzhou last May after years of thwarted attempts to gain compensation for property seizure. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of lack of faith in the legal system is the public reaction to the explosions, which was characterised more by sympathy than by anger. From McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter, via CDT:

“He’s a hero. He’s the same as me: He did everything possible but still found no solution,” said Wang Julan, 60, who with her family owns a small car dealership in Fuzhou. “The government is not administering the country in a legal way. The Chinese people have no human rights; they are not getting what they deserve….”

“If you bribe government officials you can get anything done, even if what you want to do is illegal,” said Zhu Guoying, 48, who said a local Communist Party official had suggested that some cash under the table would help resolve difficulties when her restaurant and adjoining home were flattened for a hospital expansion. “But if you don’t bribe them, you can’t even get legal things done.”

Sources:

Mainland justice is blind to plight of the powerless – SCMP.com
Dangerous Elements – pjmooney.com
Hospital in China fends off angry mob – latimes.com
Hospitals watch for patient attacks – Global Times
China works to control coverage of rare bombings – McClatchy

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A weekend of violence in China’s far western Xinjiang region has left at least 18 people dead in the ancient city of Kashgar, state-controlled media reported Sunday. It was the second major episode of violence in the last several weeks in an area racked by ethnic tensions ….

Details of the latest bloodshed, limited to conflicting reports from the state media, were sketchy and could not be independently confirmed. Xinhua said that the violence in Kashgar broke out shortly before midnight on Saturday, about an hour after residents heard two explosions, one inside a minivan and the other along a popular street lined with food stalls. The reports quoted police officials as saying that two men later hijacked a truck, stabbed its driver to death and drove the vehicle to the street of food stalls, where they attacked people with knives.

According to local residents, “the city appeared calm and that traffic was flowing normally” on Sunday evening. The Washington Post, however, reported that a curfew was enforced later on:

Residents in telephone interviews and in postings on popular microblogging sites — which have become an alternative news source in China — reported Kashgar was under a strict curfew Sunday night. One resident posted on a microblog that armored vehicles had been dispatched to the area and people were remaining indoors. Some posted photos on their microblogging Weibo accounts.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the German-based World Uigher Congress, said that from his information, “a curfew was imposed on the whole city of Kashgar, and more than 100 Uighers were detained. The incident is unbelievable, but we have to face it.”

Local authorities claim that the attacks originate from training camps in Pakistan, according to Xinhua:

The initial probe found that the group’s leaders had learned how to make explosives and firearms in overseas camps of the terrorist group “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) in Pakistan before entering Xinjiang to organize terrorist activities, the government of Kashgar City said in an online statement ….

Pan Zhiping, a researcher with the Central Asia Studies Institute under the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, called the ETIM “the most violent and dangerous” among the “East Turkistan” separatist forces. He said the organization is based somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The ETIM traditionally trains its members for suicide bombings and car bombings before sending them to Xinjiang. But today more are using the Internet to penetrate the border to spread bomb-making techniques, Pan and other long-time Xinjiang observers said.

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Two suspects hijacked a truck at 11:45 p.m. Saturday, stabbing the driver to death and ramming into pedestrians. The pair later jumped out of the truck and hacked the passers-by.

At least six people were killed on the spot and 28 others were injured. One of the rioters died when fighting with local people, and the other was nabbed.

Before the incident two blasts were heard. The first occurred at about 10:30 p.m. from a minivan, while the other was heard almost at the same time from a food street, where the thugs hijacked the truck.

Update: The Guardian is reporting that eight were killed and 28 injured in the knife attack.

Update: Xinhua also reported another three killed and three injured in a further explosion in Kashgar on Sunday afternoon.

However, a later Xinhua report said that in fact the three were killed by “hacking,” not in an explosion. The same report says four assailants were also killed by police.

Update: Al Jazeera has more details about Saturday’s attacks:

Police have shot and killed four suspects after “an eruption of violence” that came just hours after seven people were killed by a pair of knife-wielding attackers.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported two clashes on Sunday in Kashgar, capital of Xinjiang province, a region rocked by riots and ethnic violence in recent years. Other news agencies reported explosions and gunshots throughout the day.

An overseas ethnic activist group told the AP news agency it feared the violence could prompt a fresh crackdown on minority Uighurs blamed for previous unrest in the region.

A man reached Sunday at a hotel close to a major shopping street in Kashgar told the AP he had heard gunshots in the area in the afternoon.

The source, who would not give his name out of fear of reprisals, said he saw police, fire engines and ambulances, which were carrying at least two injured. He said police were not allowing people or vehicles to enter the street.

From Euro News:

See also China Says 18 Killed in Xinjiang Attack on CDT, about a clash outside a Hotan police station earlier this month, and an article on that incident and the region’s tense political and economic situation from the current edition of The Economist:

The situation in Xinjiang, said a Chinese foreign-ministry official in early July, is “good and stable”. Less than two weeks later, on July 18th, the restive region in China’s far west was again rocked by violence. Officials say police opened fire on separatist rioters in the oasis town of Khotan, killing 14. Two security officers and two people described as civilian hostages were also killed in the clash, the bloodiest in Xinjiang in two years. Recent government efforts to buy calm with dollops of aid do not appear to be working.

Exactly what happened in Khotan is uncertain. An exile group campaigning for Xinjiang’s independence from China said the police fired on protesters who had been peacefully airing grievances about police repression of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group of Turkic origin who until recently dominated Xinjiang but now form less than half the population. Officials say the police came under attack by “terrorists” armed with Molotov cocktails, bombs and knives. The assailants, says one official account, stormed a police station and unfurled a banner “promoting separatism”. Another account says they had black flags on which were written: “Allah is the only God. In the name of Allah ….”

Little evidence backs claims of terrorism linked to al-Qaeda. Violence in Xinjiang shows few hallmarks such as suicide bombings or attacks on civilian targets. Security measures in Kashgar hardly suggest a preoccupation with terrorism, but rather an attempt to keep the population cowed. On February 20th, during calls online for a “jasmine revolution” in Chinese cities, Kashgar police stationed water cannon near the city’s main mosque, while riot police lurked in a government compound. Plainclothes goons routinely follow and harass visiting correspondents.

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An explosion occurred at a restaurant in downtown Beijing Friday morning, witnesses said.

A local resident surnamed Sun said he heard the explosion. Another surnamed Qiao said the restaurant at Xinjiekou collapsed after the explosion, burying some people in the debris.

AFP has a few more details:

A policewoman in the Xinjiekou area of the Chinese capital told AFP that the initial investigation indicated the blast was accidental. She said she did not yet know whether anyone had been injured.

Above photos are from twitpic.com, the site is already being blocked by the Great Firewall.

The restaurant is located here. The updated Xinhua report has said it was gas cylinder explosion.

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Soldiers with machine guns guarded the sidewalks and police yelled at residents who tried to leave their homes Sunday, hours after officers battled bomb-tossing assailants in the second daring attack in a week in China’s restive Muslim territory.

The attackers were able to launch a series of pre-dawn bombings in the rugged Xinjiang region, far from the Beijing Olympics, despite tightened security for the games.

The violence, which police say killed 10 assailants and one security guard, also came just days after a militant Islamic group linked to al-Qaida issued a new warning it would strike during the Olympics.

No group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack in Kuqa county, and police have not released any evidence that a terrorist organization was involved. But tensions in Xinjiang have been simmering for decades between the Muslim minority Uighur people and the Han Chinese who are about 90 percent of the nation’s population.

Read also New Spasm of Violence in Western China as 11 Die in Wave of Bombings by Jim Yardley.

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Several explosions have hit the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang, state media has reported.

It said there was sporadic gunfire after the blasts, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Earlier this week, 16 Chinese policemen were killed in an attack on a border post in the province, Xinhua reported.

Xinjiang is home to many Muslim Uighur people. Uighur separatists there have waged a low-level campaign against Chinese rule for decades.

Xinhua’s report is here.

Update on 8:30 pm August 9, 2008

New deadly bomb attacks rock China’s Muslim west from AFP.

Bombings in a northwestern Chinese town on Sunday targetted a police station and commercial buildings, state run press reported, adding two policemen were injured and five attackers killed.

Witnesses saw people throw home-made explosives at the police station as well as industrial and commerical offices in Kuqa town, in the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region, state press reported.

“Two police officers and a security guard were injured, and two police cars were destroyed,” Xinhua said, citing a local police spokesman.

“Police (also) killed five attackers at the scene.”

The explosions shook the town of Kuqa between 3:20 am (1920 GMT Saturday) and 4:00 am (2000 GMT), Xinhua news agency said.

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Chinese authorities have downplayed claims by a militant Islamic group that it is responsible for a string of fatal bus bombings and other incidents and is planning a jihad against the Olympic Games.

China has been warning for months that terrorism, especially from Muslim Uygur separatists in its western Xinjiang province, poses the greatest threat to a successful Games.

But police and officials have now rejected a claim by the little-known Turkestan Islamic Party that it has already successfully carried out several such attacks, including the twin bus bombings in Yunnan this month that killed two people, and a bus explosion in Shanghai in May that killed three.

A Chinese security expert in Beijing said the group’s claim of responsibility was probably just an attempt to terrorise the public and upset the Olympics.

Also from The Time magazine:

The video seemed to fit the Islamist terror profile. Incantatory music precedes the footage of a white turbaned man, his face shrouded in white cloth, dressed in military fatigues, flanked by two similarly uniformed comrades whose identities are hidden by black commando face masks. In the video, a previously little known group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party claims it carried out several fatal bombings in the country in recent months. The group’s self-described military commander, Seyfullah, said it was responsible for incidents in Shanghai in early May and in the southern city of Kunming on July 21 that killed a total of five people. He also said the group had bombed a plastics factory in the province of Guangdong. Most ominously, he threatened to carry out further attacks during the Beijing Olympics, which are scheduled to open on August 8. Indeed, the video begins with Beijing’s Olympic logo in flames and with a grainy image of a sports facility superimposed with an animated bomb blast.

But was it a serious threat? The three minute video, which was obtained under unspecified circumstances by the Intelcenter, a Washington D.C. company that specializes in collecting counter terrorism information, was greeted with skepticism both in and out of China. Police in Shanghai and Kunming said the blasts weren’t related to opposition to Chinese rule by ethnic Uighur Muslims in the country’s far western province of Xinjiang. Police in Guangdong province also said they had no record of an explosion on the date mentioned in the video.

Video: Islamic Party Threatens Beijing Olympic Games

Reuters news video: Shanghai bus explosion.

Reuters news video: Kunming bus explosion.

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Explosions this morning in the southern Chinese city of Kunming killed at least three people and injured 13 in what appears to have been a coordinated terrorist attack.

One explosion at 7:05 a.m. on a commuter bus was followed by another an hour later on a bus downtown.

Chinese police have not yet given any explanation other than to say that the attacks were “sabotage,” according to the New China News Agency.

There were unconfirmed reports in Chinese state media that there had been a third explosion.

Passengers on the second bus told a local newspaper, Life Daily News, that they saw two men leave an unidentified object on board.

“Later, two men got off the bus, then it exploded. One-third of the bus was seriously damaged. The fire wasn’t very big, but the smoke was dense and there were strong odors,” the newspaper reported. One person was killed in the second bus explosion, and two in the earlier one.

Article on the International Herald Tribune is here.
Photos are from Chinese BBS wnxuecity.com

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At least 14 people were killed in an explosion after a bus and a tractor collided in east China’s Zhejiang Province Saturday afternoon, local police said.

The collision happened at about 1:54 p.m. in Yongzhong town, Longwan District of Wenzhou City, Zhejiang. The bus blew up and 13people died at the scene, and another in hospital, said local police.

Photos are from boxun.com:

UPDATE: According to netease.com, the Wenzhou police later announced that the explosion was manmade. However, they said explosives were not found on the bus, but were on a tractor which crashed into the bus by accident. The total death toll was 18, and 27 people were wounded, according to Wenzhou police.

“???”???? 18??27??

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An explosion at an unlicensed fireworks factory in south-west China has killed at least 16 people and injured 15 more, state media has said.

The blast happened early on Sunday morning at a workshop in Chongqing province ‘s Xiushan county, Xinhua news agency reported. Three houses were destroyed and at least one person was reported missing. Rescuers were searching through the rubble and the number of casualties could rise, Xinhua said. [Full Text]

[Image: Xiushan's location, from BBC News.]

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