Land-Use Protester Escapes China for Fear of Being ‘Disappeared’
A Chinese agriculturalist escaped his motherland after realizing local authorities could make him “disappear” at any moment after depriving him of his right to reclaim land—and using hired thugs to put him heavily in debt.
“There’s no law in China,” he told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on May 4.
He Yu, a farmer from Gansu, a province in north-central China, made it safely to America on April 7. Recalling the conflict with his local village committee in 2015, he said that disaster could have befallen him if he had not exercised considerable self-control at the time.
His case echoes the plight of many Chinese who have been left with little to nothing after being forcibly evicted from their property by authorities, often to make way for development projects.
A Trap Set
The soft-spoken He offended local communist authorities by attempting to cultivate a 659-acre plot of rough land that his wife’s family had leased since the mid-1980s.
Given that his father-in-law had only cultivated around 49 acres of land during his lifetime, there was still a vast area waiting to be reclaimed and cultivated.
Due to the degradation of their pastures, other local farmers also started opening up areas of wilderness for crops. This went on for years with the tacit approval of local government—although official policy did not allow the reclamation of such land, He explained.
He’s family developed a plan to reclaim their barren land in 2015. “We waited until 2015 because of a lack of money,” he said.
However, he did not know that the local village committee had their own “plan.”
He leased two backhoe excavators with drivers and worked from dawn to dusk—while the village committee remained silent.
After spending the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars over several months in reclaiming the land, He was ready to lay wires and dig irrigation wells—the last step before planting.
One day, however, when the excavator drivers were taking a break, dozens of strangers—several of them heavily tattooed—arrived in cars and pickup trucks.
One of the thugs picked up a brick, and ordered the excavator drivers to open their cab doors.
The two excavator operators ran away in terror. The thugs then smashed the windows, climbed in, and drove away the excavators.
Though furious, He was worried about the safety of his workers and family, so he told them to let the thugs do whatever they wanted.
The village committee then demanded he pay for the land at a rate of 1,000 yuan per mu, which would equate to more than 400,000 yuan ($56,600) for the entire area. He was ordered to pay 100,000 yuan ($14,150) as a first installment.
He had believed his legal right to the land was protected by law. “I was naive,” he said.
He paid $1,700 to retrieve the two excavators. He then paid the committee another $4,250, before filing official complaints with the government.
After petitioning different authorities at the town, county, and city level, he said he realized that he was being kicked around like a football. Finally, the village police came to him and warned him: No more complaints, or else.
At that point, He had spent all his savings and was heavily in debt. He had to quit the idea of cultivating the land, because he could not afford to pay any more to the village committee.
Indoctrination Despite Abuses
The authorities cared none for his losses, but a great deal about his thoughts, He said.
As part of the communist regime’s propaganda machine, his child’s teacher arranged a plan for the children’s parents to conduct daily political study.
Every parent had to download a political study app, which details a task of studying “Xi Jinping Thought.” He said that every farmer had to complete the political study task.
He talked about how his daytime work exhausted all his energy, but that the teacher would regularly call as late as midnight about any unfinished tasks. He said, “I delivered water to earn money—often I had to run up and down five to six flights of stairs in an apartment building. Then at night, when the teacher called, my heart would pound—it was very stressful.”
He said that Communist Party members, in particular, were forced to do the study religiously every day. He said, “People around me, young or old, from kindergarten kids to elderly people in their 80s, were all forced to take political education from the [Communist] Party.”
The stark contrast between the grandiosity of political studies and the harsh reality of his everyday life experience prompted him to consider his situation. “One day, I suddenly realized that none of what I have learned since I was a child was true, and it was all lies,” he said.
He realized that the Chinese Communist Party cares only about its own interests, and not—as it claims—the people.
After local police warned him about his complaints, He became worried that one day, he could be “disappeared” by the local authorities. His wife agreed with his concerns, and the family decided to escape China.
Based on his previous personal experiences, he decided he had to act. “I had to leave this lawless country as soon as possible … we could be disappeared at any time,” he said.
Yang Yang and Shawn Ma contributed to this report.
