Hubei official accused of ordering dumper trucks to pour dirt over people
PUBLISHED : Monday, 18 November, 2013, 7:07pm
UPDATED : Monday, 18 November, 2013, 7:16pm
Chris Luo [email protected]
Photo supposedly taken at the scene shows people trying to dig half-buried men from dirt.
A village official in Wuhan, Hubei province, is accused of ordering dumper trucks to pour dirt on five people, burying and injuring them, during a confrontation with management staff of a market.
The incident occurred last Friday when three fully-loaded dumper trucks stopped at a market for pets, birds and flowers in Jiangan district next to Xingfu village, Hubei Television’s Economy Channel reported at the weekend. A manager of the market surnamed Zhang in the programme claimed the party secretary of Xingfu village was responsible.
“Secretary Wang just said, ‘I don’t care, go ahead and bury them’, and subsequently the dirt was poured all over our staff and eventually buried them,” the manager said in the news programme. A video clip of the news cast has been widely circulated on the internet.
It took Zhang and fellow colleagues nearly half an hour to uncover all five people who were buried to varies degrees by soil, according to Zhang. One of the staff, who was completely covered, was taken to hospital suffering from multiple soft tissue injuries, he said.
Several photos displayed on the television programme, which appeared to have been taken in haste using cellphones, showed people trying to dig out a person half-buried in the dirt.
Wang, the party secretary of the village, told the The Beijing News on Sunday that the TV report “completely distorted the truth”. He denied the accusation that he had deliberately ordered the people to be buried. “I am a [Communist] Party member. How could I have said such thing?” he was cited as saying by the newspaper.
However, Wang admitted he authorised the construction vehicles to pile dirt at the entrance to the marketplace, saying he did so only to draw the government’s attention to the dispute with the market.
Wang could not be reached for comment, but a spokesperson of Jiangan district government said the authority was still investigating the case in a telephone interview on Monday.
The confrontation, which has lasted for years, revolves around a piece of land claimed by both the marketplace and the village, they told media. But the dispute escalated as no senior government organ would intervene to solve the matter.
