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Chinese protest land requisitions
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Agence France-Presse
MONDAY, JULY 4, 2005
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BEIJING Thousands of farmers in China's southern Guangdong Province demonstrated against government-backed land-requisition policies, with clashes erupting after the police detained some protesters, a rights group said Sunday.
On Thursday, the first day of the protests, four people were taken into custody by the police after farmers tried to prevent bulldozers from leveling about 670 hectares, or 1,655 acres, of land near the village of Sanshangang, according to the Empowerment and Rights Institute, an independent rights group.
On Saturday, the third consecutive day of protests, demonstrators surrounded the public security bureau in Sanshangang and demanded the release of the farmers who had been arrested, according to Maggie Hou, an official with the rights institute.
"Some 200 demonstrators began the protest on Saturday," Hou said. "But by the evening, several thousand protesters had arrived."
About 600 members of the police watched as the protesters shouted slogans and carried banners that said "Give our land back" and "The land law should be implemented equally," Hou said.
The police in Sanshangang declined to comment, saying only that inquiries should be directed to higher officials. Officials in Nanhai county, which administers Sanshangang, also declined to comment.
At least one person, identified as Shao Shuntian, was arrested Saturday after clashes broke out between protesters and law enforcement officers, according to Hou. "Police clubbed her with a baton and began kicking her after she fell down," Hou said. "She tried to fight back and so they took her away."
An independent photographer from the United States, Scott Gorman, was also detained by the police Saturday, but was later released.
The demonstrations centered around the fact that about 7,000 farmers are being evicted from the land that they farm. The process began in 1992 when several village leaders were bribed into signing blank contracts with the local land administration office, according to the rights institute.
Land prices in Guangdong, a center of China's booming industrial sector, have skyrocketed in the past 20 years as thousands of factories have opened to benefit from cheap local labor.
Last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said that the top 10 percent of the Chinese population shared 45 percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest 10 percent had 1.4 percent.
Farmer protests have become increasingly frequent in China in recent weeks, with most of them directed against land requisition policies and the abuse of power by local officials.
On Thursday, about 600 people from the village of Jianxia, in eastern Zhejiang Province, took control of a battery factory that they said was poisoning their children. They took 1,000 workers hostage.
Late last month, President Hu Jintao urged the paramilitary police, who are often called on when there are riots, to do more to ensure social stability.
Earlier in June, six people were killed and nearly 50 were injured after about 200 people beat up farmers in a village in Hebei Province who had refused to comply with government eviction orders.
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