China: Tianjin blast victims feel pressured to accept govt. offers on compensations
'Tianjin Blast Victims Protest for Better Compensation', 17 September 2015
A month after chemical explosions drove them from their high-rise apartments, some residents from the damaged Paradiso compound were meeting with local officials to discuss compensation when a fellow homeowner barged in…One owner in the Paradiso complex said she felt “bitterly disappointed” by the treatment of residents affected by the blasts…
Homeowners sought out neighbors from their own compound at the protests. Many had never met before the blasts. Now they were forming discussion groups on messaging apps like WeChat and QQ and researching government payouts to victims of other disasters.
…[L]ocal authorities offered to buy back apartments at a marked-up price…Local authorities have pressed owners to accept the government’s offers…“The government is trying to bully us into submission, using our employers to pressure us,” said one homeowner who works at a state-owned company…
Officials have offered an unusually large payout to relatives of the 104 firefighters killed in the blast…“A lot of media attention was focused on the young, poorly trained and poorly paid firefighters who died. As a result, the government was prepared to make a big pay-out in order to stifle any suggestion that it was dishonoring the firefighters’ sacrifice,” China Labour Bulletin said in a note…