Letter Three: We became homeless refugees
An open letter to the government of Wushan County, Chongqing Municipality
April 20, 2013
By Mao Jicai
Dear leaders of the government of Wushan County:
How are you!
My name is Mao Jicai, former villager from Group Six of Hongguang Village in
Wuxia Town, Wushan County. I have written you letters countless times, trying to tell
you of my situation but I never got a single response from you. Today I am writing
you, and this may be the last time. If there is still no response from you, I will never
write again, and will remain silent for ten thousand years from now!
In 1991, I borrowed more than 40,000 yuan from my relatives and built a house made
of brick-concrete in Hongguang Village, because our old home was too small for our
growing family to settle in comfortably. We opened a small store in the village and
were able to make ends meet. In 1994, before the damming of the Yangtze River by
the Three Gorges Dam project, officials and workers from the Changjiang Water
Resources Commission (CWRC) came to Wushan and conducted a formal and
thorough survey of my home, registering all of its details. The survey clearly tabled
key information about my house: Owner: Mao Jicai; Type of House: brick-concrete
structure housing; Area: 94 square metres; Date of Construction: March 1991.
According to policy established by the Three Gorges Construction Committee
(TGPCC) under the State Council, all housing and constructions built before April 4,
1992, are considered property impacted by the Three Gorges project and those who
own these properties will be entitled compensation in accordance with the relevant
resettlement policy.
We fully believed that we would be able to obtain compensation funding for our
housing before the Yangtze was dammed by the Three Gorges project. But never, ever
did we think we wouldn’t get a single penny after twenty years of waiting, twenty
years of struggling and twenty years of seeking help from higher authorities at various
levels.
Initially, the Resettlement Bureau of Wushan County refused to pay us the
compensation, by saying that we had built the house illegally. The officials became
speechless, but still did nothing for us after we showed them the land use certificates
issued by the county government. In 1998, unhappy with our constant efforts to seek
help from higher authorities, they (the officials at the Resettlement Bureau of Wushan
County) said that our housing was not registered by the CWRC. Under these
circumstances, we found someone who had witnessed the housing registration back in
1994, when the CWRC was conducting the survey and our house was re-registered.
But the Resettlement Bureau of Wushan County not only ignored our claim, it has
never given us a response.
In August 2002, after years of hardship in Wushan, I took my whole family to Zhuhai
City in Guangdong Province, more than 1,200 km away from my birthplace, where I
believed I could earn more money to support my family and send my kids to school
for a better education. What I did not expect was that the officials in Wushan would
hire people to demolish our house completely in October, less than two months after
we said farewell to our hometown with tears in our eyes. What made us more
outraged was that our property and belongings, including furniture, appliances and
other things inside our home, had nowhere to go!
After hearing of this news in Zhuhai, I returned quickly to Wushan and went directly
to the county government to insist that what they had done was a violation of human
rights, but they didn’t even bother to listen. I asked them to pay the compensation due
for my home, but they didn’t care, not even a single ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This was the hardest
period of my whole life, although I had gone through much since 1994, when my
family became part of the group affected by the Three Gorges project. Even up until
this point, my family of five still hasn’t received a penny of the compensation money
we deserve. We became out-and-out refugees, without a piece of land, without a
single room!
Dear leaders of Wushan County, you keep saying that you act for the migrants
according to the state resettlement policy, but why haven’t we received any of the
funding earmarked for the resettlement? You also say that we are not migrants
because our housing was flooded but our land was not affected, but this is whose
resettlement policy anyway? Responding to the state’s calling, we sacrificed our small
family home for the country. Why didn’t the government take our livelihood into
consideration?
My case is not isolated. As I know, like us, there are at least a hundred or so
households that were surveyed and registered by the dam project authority. Similarly,
their houses were violently brought down by the local government in the county seat
of Wushan. We, refugees, fled from the Three Gorges reservoir area and currently we
live together at a forgotten corner in Zhuhai (Guangdong Province), working at
enterprises such as garment factories and living in small, rented rooms. Every day, we
look forward to going home and receiving the compensation money we should have
already been given. That money is not easy money but hard-earned money immersed
in our blood and sweat!
Dear leaders of Wushan County, you are our father-mother officials, but do you know
that my own 90-year-old mother hopes fervently that I will return home every single
day, and do you have any sense of how homesick we migrants are, every moment that
we are so far away from our birthplace?
I am sincerely looking forward to your reply.
Mao Jicai
Written in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province