April 13, 2005, 8:12PM
BEIJING - Thousands of people rioted Sunday in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers from protesting pollution from nearby factories.
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By Wednesday afternoon, witnesses say, crowds convened in the village, Huaxi, in Zhejiang province to look at a stunning tableau of destroyed police cars and shattered windows. Police officers were reported to be barring reporters from the scene, but local people reached by telephone said villagers controlled the riot area.
"The villagers will not give up if there is no concrete action to move the factories away," said a Mr. Lu, a villager who said he had witnessed part of the confrontation. "The crowd is growing. There are at least 50,000 or 60,000 people." He would not give his full name.
Other villagers gave substantially smaller crowd estimates. They agreed on the broad outlines of a violent clash villagers say came after they had tried in vain for two years to curb pollution from chemical plants in a nearby industrial park.
An account in a local state-controlled newspaper blamed local agitators for the brawl and said thousands of people had set upon government workers with rocks, clubs and sticks.
There were conflicting reports about injuries, and Lu said two elderly women among the protesters had been gravely injured after being run over by a police vehicle. The Dongyang Daily said more than 30 government employees had been hospitalized, including five with serious injuries. Neither account could be confirmed.
Huaxi is a few hours' drive south of Hangzhou, the provincial capital of coastal Zhejiang. It is a short distance from the Zhuxi Industrial Function Zone, the local industrial park that villagers say is home to 13 chemical factories.
"The air stinks from the factories," said a villager, Wang Yuehe. She said the local river was filled with pollutants that had contaminated local farmland.