Police stepped up security yesterday outside a southern village where protesters were shot and killed, setting up roadblocks in surrounding towns even as the government tried to defuse local anger by promising to deal with grievances.
Police were stopping cars headed for the village of Dongzhou, the scene of the Dec. 6 violence, and checking the identities of drivers and passengers. Roadblocks were set up some 4km farther out from the village than on Monday.
It wasn't clear who police were looking for, but villagers said earlier that security forces were trying to catch people whom they blamed for the protest. Officials also have tried to keep foreign reporters away from Dongzhou, a coastal village northeast of Hong Kong.
The new security measures came as the government tried to mollify public anger by detaining the commander of force that opened fire on people protesting land seizures and promising to respond to local complaints.
The government says three people were killed, while villagers put the death toll as high as 20.
Villagers say the protest erupted over complaints that residents received little or no compensation for land seized by the government for construction of a power plant.
The violence last week was the deadliest clash yet in a series of confrontations in areas throughout China between police and villagers who are angry over land seizures for construction of factories, shopping malls and other projects.
Chinese leaders are alarmed at the growing rural tensions.
President Hu Jintao's (
On Monday, relatives and friends of villagers killed in Dongzhou held traditional mourning rituals, sobbing as they burned incense.
The government hung banners throughout the village appealing for order. One said, "Troublemakers will not win the hearts of the people."
Vehicles with loudspeakers blared warnings, telling people: "Don't make trouble, don't spread gossip."
Villagers earlier had hung up banners appealing to the Chinese government to intervene in the dispute, according to residents. They said those banners were torn down the day of the shootings and burned by police.
The government earlier defended the shootings, saying police opened fire after protesters armed with knives, spears and dynamite attacked the power plant before turning on authorities.
Villagers said the dispute had been brewing for more than a year.
By the government's count, China had more than 70,000 cases of rural unrest last year, many which are escalating in violence on both sides. The incidents have alarmed communist leaders, who are promising to spend more to raise living standards in the poor countryside, home to about 800 million people.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS