BEIJING, June 12 - Two brothers threatened a construction team with a homemade bomb after the Beijing city government evicted them and ordered their home destroyed to make way for the 2008 Olympics, state press said Sunday.
The two brothers, identified only by their surname Chen, doused themselves with gasoline and threatened to set off the primitive bomb made from fireworks and ball bearings when the construction team came to tear down their house on May 30, the Beijing News reported.
Whoever dares to destroy our house will perish with us together,'' the two brothers shouted at workers during the stand off, the paper said. The two brothers, aged in their 30s, also sprayed workers and passerbys with gasoline and threw bricks at them, it said. They were detained by police after the five-hour standoff and formally arrested by the Shijingshan district police last week, the paper said. The paper did not say which 2008 Olympic Games project was to be built at the site, but maintained that the eviction and home destruction order had been carried out in accordance with the law.’’
It was not the first time that Beijingers have been arrested for opposing eviction and home destruction orders linked with the Beijing games.
Last month, the London-based rights group Amnesty International cited the case of Ye Guozhu, who was sentenced to four years in prison in August 2004 for disturbing social order'' after he applied to hold a demonstration against Beijing's land requisition policies. Ye Guozhu and his family had been forcibly evicted from their home in Beijing last year to make way for construction reportedly related to the 2008 Olympics,’’ the report said.
Ye’s brother Ye Guoqiang is also serving a two-year prison sentence for attempting to commit suicide on Tiananmen Square because of the eviction which put an end to the family business.
The Ye brothers said that no Olympic Games venue would be built on the site of their former home, but that local officials were paid by developers to use the Olympic Games as a pretext to push forward lucrative real estate deals.
In China, all land belongs to the state.
The Beijing city government has refused to comment on the case.
Wow, shouldn’t the olympic committee know about this stuff? I mean i hope these guys are getting something in return, i mean i’d be pissed off if people took my house for nothing.