They don't appear much different than the 20th century version do they?
"Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 10 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday.
During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.
Police fired into the crowd and killed a handful of people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. Accounts of the death toll ranged from two and 10, with many missing.
Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd — as the military did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, when hundreds, if not thousands, were killed."
It doesn't always happen, but that's what you risk when you disarm the populace & fail to instill in them a sense of independence from government. Or more to the point this is what can happen when the government doesn't fear its people enough.
See also David Codrea's take on things as well as Hugh Hewitt's.
Posted by Publicola at December 9, 2005 11:57 PM | TrackBack