FCCC INCIDENT REPORTS
–submitted by an FCCC Member:
The incident happened while I was in Wukan village, Guangdong province, on November 18th 2016.
I had taken a high-speed train on that morning from Guangzhou to the nearby city of Lufeng, hired a driver in Lufeng, managed to get into the actual village of Wukan, but after roughly 1.5 hours in the village, an official saw me in the street and stopped me. He said I wasn’t allowed to be there.
Immediately, he called the police, and then a big black SUV pulled over, with 3 men inside: 2 were unidentified (no uniform) but the other one, big tall guy, was wearing black from head to toe and a black T-shirt that read “Police”.
They drove me to the local police station of Wukan, where they photocopied every single page of my passport. At some point, a policeman even took a picture of me without my consent, but I covered my face with my hand.
Then, the head of Lufeng PSB came and started to question me: “why did I come, how did I know about Wukan, how long was I planning to stay, what was my feeling there.” He remained polite but I could see he was “playing” with me to see how I would react. At some point he said: “so, you’ve seen that the village is quiet and that everything is back to normal. Do you prefer that, or chaos like in Syria and Libya ? Or perhaps you prefer terrorist attacks like you’ve had in France recently?”
After a while, the head of the Lufeng propaganda bureau came. He was much friendlier. He said that if I wanted to come to Wukan, I had to contact the Propaganda bureau first, who would have arranged a tour. He said that this was a requirement from a 2008 State Council Regulation, which he showed me on his phone after I asked a proof. I said I had never heard of such a requirement after 5 years reporting in China. But he insisted. He later gave me a 30-page propaganda document with the city’s official line on Wukan. He also deleted all the pictures of Wukan I had taken with my iPhone — even the pictures of the village’s temple!
Then, he invited me for lunch in Lufeng. During lunch, I asked him some questions about Wukan, but he refused to answer, and pointed me to the official document he had given me earlier. Before that, since he had said that everything was fine now in Wukan, I offered him the chance to guide me through the village and explain me how they fixed the land grabs issue. But he declined that offer as well.