China “Pulverises Protester with Steamroller”

The Internet is aghast at grisly pictures which purportedly show a protester who was gruesomely flattened with a steamroller by Chinese government enforcers, after he dared to oppose a local land grab.

Supposedly, he unwisely (though probably unknowingly) attempted to emulate Tiananmen Square’s “Tank Man” in blocking the path of construction machinery with his own body, but when he lay in front of a steamroller they merely drove it over him, crushing him to a bloody pulp.

What are said to be his brains are visible strewn about the scene:

Disgusted locals apparently took pictures of the event and uploaded them online, whilst local officials naturally scrambled to cover the incident up by seizing his corpse and flooding the village with their enforcers.

The cause of his defiance was said to be his dissatisfaction with local officials making a grab for his land, a common enough occurrence amongst the notoriously corrupt local governments of China.

Tens of thousands of such local disturbances reportedly occur throughout China each year in response to the less than perfect rule of law the nation enjoys, and local governments are infamous for employing thuggish tactics to quell them, even sending snatch squads after citizens who attempt to petition the central government in Beijing.

However, others claim the pictures merely show a ghastly accident, or are fabricated completely – quite possibly correct, given that the only original sources appear to be Chinese Internet rumours (most of which have since been censored into oblivion) and the website of America’s foremost conspiracy theorist, mysteriously cited as a reliable source by no less than the Daily Mail.