Guardian journalist "assaulted in China"

Story:

Last evening, Benjamin Joffe-Walt, a reporter with The Guardian, arrived in Guangzhou with his assistant Mr. Chen to work on the Taishi Village official recall story. Today, he went there accompanied by the National People's Congress delegate Lu Banglie who had been active in the case. By 7pm, Lu Banglie who did not intend to enter the village had still not returned and Joffe-Walt could not be reached by telephone either. The friend waiting outside the village was concerned and contacted villagers. At that moment, Benjamin Joffe-Walt also sent a SMS to his British colleague: "Our car is being surrounded and we are being attacked!" The villagers then told the friend: "They are inside Taishi Village, being assaulted. The foreigner is near death. It is pitiful. Please call for help!" "The attackers are security personnel hired by the village party secretary at 100 RMB per day. Their job is to assault all outsiders and foreigners in the village! Every day, they drink alcohol, beat and arrest people. This is black terror!"

Apparently covering the Taishi Village elections story. Chronology here. Summary here. Nothing over here about it yet. ESWN says that if this story holds up it's going to be impossible for the central government not to intervene. If so, the issue here isn't whether the Chinese government are moving towards democracy. It's how much power the Chinese government actually has.

UPDATE: The story makes Reuters:

A Chinese activist was missing on Sunday after being badly beaten when he and a foreign journalist went to a village in southern China, other activists and friends said.

They said Lu Banglie and Benjamin Joffe-Walt of the Guardian newspaper in Britain were stopped by a group including people in police and army uniforms and about 30 in plainclothes when they neared Taishi village in Guangdong province on Saturday night.

"They pulled him (Lu) out and beat him unconscious. Even after he was unconscious they continued beating him for about 10 minutes," said Jonathan Watts, the Guardian's Beijing-based correspondent...

The uniformed officers left before the attack, he added.

Joffe-Walt, based in Shanghai, was roughed up but escaped without serious injury, but Lu has not been seen or heard from since Saturday night.

"No one has heard from Lu. We're extremely concerned about what has happened to him," Watts said.

Amazing, the small town thug mentality. "Let's avoid beating the foreigner too badly. let's just beat somebody to death in front of him. That way we can avoid anyone making a fuss."

Comments

[Alex]

Apparently Blair thinks there's an "unstoppable momentum towards democracy" in China. Presumably he thinks that's a good thing...because if the Chinese government retains the confidence of the men in grey and mauve uniforms, there will be a lot of blood on the floor.

Yes, it's incredible that they thought they'd just beat the guy to death in front of the carload of journalists, but I suppose part of the condition of being able to beat people to death with impunity is that you get a little swollen-headed.

I also note that they then took the Grauniad team off to meet the "associate director of government news". After the torture, the PR..

[Tom]

Be fair, they would have beaten the foreigner to death if they could have got him out of the car.

They didn't later granted, but sometimes that moment's just passed, you know?