BEIJING: A paralysed Chinese activist, who was beaten after campaigning on behalf of displaced residents from the Three Gorges Dam area, yesterday vowed to continue his fight and appealed for help with paying for vital surgery.
Fu Xiancai’s neck was broken in an attack from behind by unknown assailants on June 8, shortly after a discussion with local police about his interviews with foreign media.
Speaking by telephone from his hospital bed in Yichang city, in the central province of Hubei, Fu said he did not regret his long campaign for residents who say they were cheated out of compensation and housing when they were resettled from the Three Gorges area.
“I will continue to sue (the local government), and fight with the corrupt officials as long as I am alive,” he said.
“After I am cured, I will continue to contact the foreign media,” he said.
Fu is paralysed from the neck down and his father said he was holding the telephone for him.
Doctors said they wanted to operate on Friday but only if Fu’s family can first pay 30,000 yuan ($3,750), Fu said.
“At first they asked for 60,000 yuan, now they say ‘if you do not have 60,000 yuan at least you have to pay 30,000 yuan,’” he said.
“I do not have money now, so the operation cannot be conducted.”
“My neck is broken. I can only lie on the bed and cannot move. My legs and arms do not have any feeling.”
Fu said he hoped media attention to his plight would encourage people to make donations to help him pay for surgery.
He said he was still unsure who attacked him.
“I could not see clearly, perhaps it was a gang member sent by the police,” he said.
“The police asked me what the German television interviewed me about, and I told them the truth, that the local government kept the compensation from the central government, that we have no human rights or equality, and so on.
“After I came back from the police station, about 10 minutes later and about 1km away, this (the attack) happened.”
The director of German television station NDR on Tuesday filed a letter of complaint with China’s ambassador to Germany over the attack on Fu.
In the letter, NDR director Jobst Plog asked Ambassador Ma Canrong to “initiate anything in your power to provide severely injured Fu Xiancai with any necessary and possible medical care”.
Plog said the assault appeared to be related to an interview with Fu about the controversial Three-Gorges project broadcast in a German television news magazine on May 19.
In the interview, Fu complained that he and many other people affected by forced relocations to facilitate the dam’s construction never received any compensation promised by the Chinese government.
“It is beyond doubt that the assault was an act of revenge to punish Fu for his comments on the German television programme,” Plog wrote in the letter.
As the principal television station representing German television pool ARD during the Olympic Games 2008 in China, it was even more tragic for NDR “that a Chinese citizen was severely injured just because he made reasonable comments in an ARD programme,” Plog wrote.
“This overshadows our intention to intensify our coverage of the Olympic Games 2008,” Plog added.
“I filed 15 complaints in Beijing with the central government, and more than 50 with municipal and provincial administrations, but nobody bothered to help. On the contrary, I was threatened and beaten,” Fu said on the programme.
The interview’s raw footage was offered to ARD’s Beijing bureau by an undisclosed third party and incorporated into the news magazine report about the conclusion of construction of the Three-Gorges dam.
New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) condemned the latest attack on Fu and detailed 10 more incidents of intimidation or violence against Fu this year.
Yesterday, HRIC issued a statement welcoming the intervention by the German government in Fu’s case.–DPA |
