BBC Newsnight editor Paul Mason writes on his blog:
I have just been sent an excerpt of what my colleagues in BBC Monitoring have gleaned today from Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency….
“1600 on 28 June, the relatives of the deceased gathered together about 300 or more people, who went on a demonstration in the county town of Wengan, holding banners…Instigated by a minority of people, some lawless elements assaulted the policemen with mineral water bottles, clumps of soil, and bricks. They then broke through the row of policemen with linked arms inside the ground floor lobby of the public security bureau building, smashed office equipment, and burned vehicles. …. At or around 2000, the lawless elements perpetrated beating, smashing, looting, and burning against the office buildings of Wengan County’s CCP committee and government. At one point, they assaulted the nearby detention house of the county. The whole event lasted nearly seven hours.
“In this incident, the county CCP committee’s building was destroyed by burning; 104 offices of the county government building were destroyed by burning; 47 offices and four facades of the office building of the county public security bureau were destroyed by burning; 14 offices of the criminal investigation building were smashed up; the entirety of the files and data at the domicile administration centre of the county public security bureau was destroyed;….(Source: Xinhua news agency domestic service, Beijing, in Chinese 1746 gmt 1 Jul 08)
…What is clear is the scale of the attack on the entire apparatus of CCP rule in Guizhou: the party, the police, the courts and the secret police were attacked, their premises comprehensively trashed (as this local TV report shows) and set on fire. A crackdown on “lawless gangs” is now in progress and as the FT reports, there has been a nationwide crackdown on all protests and petitions.
Please also read and contribute (if you can) to the article 2008 Guizhou riot on the Wikipedia.
