Chinese Farmers Clash with Police
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
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Dozens injured as police, farmers clash in China
Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:57 AM BST
BEIJING (Reuters) -- More than 2,000 disgruntled farmers
have clashed with hundreds of policemen in China's northern
region of Inner Mongolia in a land dispute that injured
dozens, sources said on Wednesday.
The July 21 clash in Qianjin village, a part of Tongliao
city about 725 km (450 miles) northeast of Beijing, was one
of a growing number of protests across China, most of which
go unreported in the tightly controlled state media.
"Some policemen were armed with guns, but they did not open
fire," a farmer who requested anonymity told Reuters. "The
clash lasted about six hours. Police were outnumbered and fled."
Dozens of villagers were injured and rushed to nearby
hospitals, he said.
Farmers seized bulldozers and other construction equipment
intended for use in building a highway across the farmers'
land, which had been reclaimed by the government, he said.
Local government officials and police reached by telephone
either declined to comment or claimed they had no knowledge
of the clashes.
But Han Guowu, chief of the Ke'erqin district in which
Qianjin is located, said in a telephone interview that the
farmers had refused to turn over their farmland and blocked
construction of the highway. Land disputes, corruption,
abuse of power and a widening gap between rich and poor were
among the reasons leading to the number of protests shooting
up to 74,000 last year from just 10,000 in 1994, a Hong Kong
newspaper reported earlier this month.
The number of protesters involved in those demonstrations
jumped to 3.76 million in 2004 from 730,000 a decade
earlier, the Beijing-funded Ta Kung Pao newspaper quoted
Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang as telling
parliament's top advisory body.
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Dan Clore
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