Stora Enso subcontractor involved in fatal clash in Chinese village

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A forest industry company, which was working as a subcontractor of Stora Enso in China, was involved in a clash at the company’s eucalyptus plantation last Saturday. One person was killed in the melee.
      Stora Enso CEO Jouko Karvinen says that the incident involved a dispute over four trees. On opposing sides were company workers and about 20 villagers from two families. A family feud that had lasted for years was involved in the trouble, and the subcontractor was a member of one of the families.
      The situation got out of hand, and one of the villagers died of injuries sustained in the brawl.
      Karvinen says that it is now the turn of the local police to determine what actually happened. The company has decided to withdraw from the area until everything is cleared up.
     
However, Karvinen reiterates that Stora Enso is not pulling out of China. “I think that it is important that we do not turn our backs, and quit when problems arise.”
      He says that the incident underscores that the company needs to continue to learn, and to specify its practices in areas where land disputes are commonplace. Karvinen feels that Stora Enso should manage to improve its methods of action so that “all sides will understand that no tree or plot of land is so important for us, nor will it ever be so important, that it would justify the use of violence.”
      In developing its activities, Stora Enso is getting the help of the United Nations Development Programme.
     
The fatal incident emerged when Stora Enso began to investigate the violence linked with eucalyptus cultivation in China’s Guangxi Province, after Helsingin Sanomat reported on the company’s possible connections with the beatings of villagers.
      The company has about 3,000 land lease contracts in the area.
      Stora Enso’s manager in China, Song Wangqiu, has been in the area, talking to villagers, officials, and representatives of the local administration.
      “They have very much the same view as we do, that violence must not be the way”, Karvinen says of the representatives of the local administration.
      Lawyer Yang Zaixin, who has defended the rights of the villagers in Guangxi tells Helsingin Sanomat that Stora Enso’s representative Song has not been in contact with him. Yang knows the disputes well, and has passed on the concerns of villagers to Stora Enso as well.
      He suffered a beating three weeks ago.
     
Stora Enso insists that neither the company nor anyone in its employment have been involved in the three incidents described in the article.
      Karvinen emphasises that in two of the cases, the company had announced its intentions to withdraw from the land lease schemes, because the land ownership issues were murky.
      However, the company had decided later to lease 50 hectares of land from one of the locations, the village of Huashijiang. however, the tree cultivation ended with a clash in December 2008.
      Karvinen says that village administrators and a subcontractor of the local administration were apparently behind the violence.
      Lawyer Yang feels that Stora Enso nevertheless holds responsibility for dealing with the problems.
      “I have also seen documents in which Stora Enso urges local officials to hand over the land early”, Yang writes in an e-mail.
     
Now the company is waiting for police reports. Before they are ready, Karvinen does not want to speculate on whom to blame.
      Karvinen says that land ownership conditions are often unclear in China, and contradictory documents on land ownership are quite common.
      “It is not possible to eliminate differing views among villages and people, but they need to be resolved, just like other disputes”, he says.
     
Karvinen says that China has a system of arbitration and legal avenues. The company says that most of the land leased to Stora Enso, about 93,000 hectares, is leased from land owned by the province, and the rest from local village communities.
      The CEO cannot say what kind of compensation the farmers have received for the use of their farmland.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Stora Enso to investigate land use dispute over tree plantations in China (28.4.2009)

See also:
  Chinese farmers lose land to Stora Enso tree plantations (26.4.2009)
  Finnish Prime Minister wants investigation into claims of violence linked with Stora Enso activities in China (26.4.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat