**Rough Pass: Beijing Doesn’t Go So Lightly, Protesters Have Been Hurt – There Are Signs of Life, Protesters Continue to Hold Out**
**August 23, 2009**
Beijing time at about 3 o’clock on the afternoon of August 22, a group of thugs violently assaulted the petitioner’s villages in Wukan. They set fire to homes and looted property in the village, causing injuries to the villagers. Almost simultaneously, they stormed into the homes of those who were lodging the petitioners, injuring some of them and searching for other targets.
According to Wukan villager Chen Baocheng who is currently staying at a hotel in downtown Guangzhou, he received phone calls for help from several villagers early that afternoon. He said that at least four homes were destroyed by arson. Two young petitioners were severely beaten and were sent to a hospital in Shanwei for emergency treatment. One of them suffered a skull fracture and the other had a broken nose and other injuries.
An emergency notice was immediately passed around among the petitioners staying in various hotels in Guangzhou. By 11 pm that evening, twenty-five petitioners from Beijing, Tianjin, Hangzhou and other locations gathered outside the Guangdong Provincial Government building. They held up banners that said, .
