HAO FEN FANG: We often have nightmares about the people from our village council intruding into our house and beating us. If this happened in real life, there would be nothing we could do about it because the public authorities would not be willing to investigate the case. By contrast, if we beat the members of the village council, the police would arrest us immediately.
    We are worried every day because we have no food, no money, no land. Today in my family, each person only gets 75 kilos of rice and cereals per year. That’s 200 grams per person per day. That’s not enough. So we also have nightmares of starving to death. We have no money, and how are we supposed to earn money? We have no land! No money and not enough to eat. How can we live on? We have no human rights at all. How could we not have nightmares? If there were a place that would hear our case and do something about it, we would not have nightmares about being beaten up by the police.
    In 2006 we tried to meet with the higher authorities. We wanted to tell them that the leaders of our village council are corrupt and that they are stealing public money. Then on August 11, 2006, the village council leaders intruded into our house and beat us up. We have all the evidence but neither the Public Security Bureau nor the police wanted to hear our case, let alone the government. So we have nightmares, because nobody punishes these people. In our dreams, they beat us again and again. Now we are trying to find some government bureau or institution that protects human rights. We are appealing to the higher authorities to help us. What have we done wrong? Why haven’t they been punished for beating us?
    In 2006, the people who managed the land we were working on decided to give us only 75 kilos of food supplies per year. Out of protest, the villagers refused to continue working on the land. So the land was left uncultivated. We then applied to the government for permission to rent the land, but it seems they’d rather leave the land uncultivated for a year than let us work on it. They also sent people to harass us. In 2007, the villagers went back to cultivating the land. All our efforts were wasted. We still have only 200 grams of rice per day. How are we supposed to live on that? Even the people who suffered the earthquake have more than that! Now there is a village in China where people have only 200 grams of rice per day. They have no land, no money, no food. That place is Shuanghe, my village. Is there any other place where people only have 200 grams of rice per day?