Book on dam's relocated victims lands author in jail
A Beijing-based author, who has been detained for more than 12 days for publishing a self-funded book on problems faced by people relocated to make way for the Sanmen Gorge dam and reservoir in the 1950s, has become the latest victim of mainland curbs on dissenting voices.
Former reporter Xie Zhaoping , 55, has been detained at the Linwei district police station in Weinan , Shaanxi , for 'illegal business' after publishing Large Migration, a 100,000-word book, in May.
Xie was taken from his rented apartment in western Beijing on August 19 by seven plain-clothes policemen, four from Weinan and three from Beijing. They claimed they were population census staff before Xie's wife Li Qiong opened the door.
The policemen grabbed Xie and handcuffed him before they showed their identity documents. They then searched the apartment and confiscated Xie's laptop computer, voice recorder and USB flash drive. They told Li they would take Xie to Chaoyang police station.
Xie was taken to Weinan on August 24, without Li being notified beforehand.
Weinan police tried to deny Xie's lawyer, Zhou Ze , permission to visit him on August 30. After negotiating for a day, Zhou met Xie in the police station for more than two hours on August 31.
'Xie was in a reasonably good spirits,' Zhou said. 'He said he was bullied by fellow inmates at the very beginning and later gained respect from inmates after they knew why he was detained.
'Xie thinks he's being persecuted because he's disclosed embezzlement, local government wrongdoing, migrants' suffering and land disputes. It is another case of abuse of public power to repress public scrutiny and a breach of freedom of publication.
'It is basically a similar case to journalists who come under pressure from collusion between government and business.'
Xie spent three years working on the book after being tipped off in 2006 by anti-graft campaigner Li Wanmin , president of the work union of the Weinan Migration Bureau in Shaanxi.
After finishing writing, he contacted Sparkle Magazine, based in Taiyuan , Shanxi, and published 10,000 copies at a cost of more than 100,000 yuan as a supplement to the magazine in May.
On June 26, Xie had thousands of books delivered to Weinan and planned to give them to migrants. But the Weinan Culture Inspection Team and police confiscated 4,800 copies as 'illegal publications' the next morning.
'The book is an objective account of what has happened to immigrant peasants, a marginalised group among peasants,' Li Wanmin said. Li sent an open letter to the Weinan city government on July 24 saying 'it's the duty of the government to help publish the book, not stifle the book'. He has yet to receive a reply.
Wei Pizhi , the magazine's Beijing-based managing editor, told The Beijing News that its supervisor had not censored the book before publishing the supplement.
The Sanmen Gorge project in Henan province was the first large hydro-power project on the upper Yellow River.
About 600,000 people had to move from four counties in Weinan to other counties or even Ningxia province.
They were not given any compensation and some had to move eight times. Many died of starvation during the Great Famine between 1961 and 1963, Li Wanmin said.
'Some migrant people knelt down begging my husband to record what they had suffered and how loyal they were to the party's leadership,' Xie's wife said.
'They wanted to show it to their descendants.'
