By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 15, 2006; A10
BO MEI, China, April 14 -- Firing tear-gas grenades and swinging batons, hundreds of riot police and civilian officials battled rebellious farmers for three hours Wednesday, injuring more than two dozen villagers, including a woman gravely wounded when a tear-gas canister slammed into her forehead, villagers said.
The explosion of violence in Bo Mei, between Shantou city, in Guangdong province, and Hong Kong, ended a three-month lull in unrest that has unfurled across the Chinese countryside in recent years, posing a major political problem for the government of President Hu Jintao.
Premier Wen Jiabao, China's second-ranking leader, recently told a group of visiting U.S. officials that the surge in rural uprisings kept him awake at night, according to a person at the meeting. In response, his administration has ordered a $42.5 billion program to improve farmers' lives. Last month Hu also ordered the Chinese military to be ready to put down "mass incidents."
Most of the violent protests have erupted in farming villages over land seizures by local governments or factory pollution that seeps into fields and kills crops. Participants in the clashes here said Friday that Bo Mei's 10,000 residents rose up because authorities tried to demolish a pair of irrigation dikes constructed without authorization from the Guangdong provincial Waterworks Administration.
According to accounts from villagers, about 600 riot police and several hundred civilian officials wearing red armbands entered Bo Mei at 9 a.m. Wednesday. On orders from the Shantou Communist Party secretary, they said, the security forces stood guard as a front-end loader plowed into one of the earthen dikes diverting waters of the Chao Shui River to villagers' rice paddies.
As news of the incident spread, witnesses said, hundreds of outraged villagers rushed to the scene and began throwing bricks at the police and other officials, who responded by throwing bricks back, spraying protesters with high-pressure hoses and firing volleys of tear-gas grenades. Two police vehicles were burned, according to a villager who said he saw their blackened hulks.
"All the old women were crying, shouting and throwing bricks at the police," said a witness, whose name, like those of others interviewed, was withheld because of fears he may be targeted for retribution.
Villagers, still seething two days after the clashes, said that the security forces included riot police from the Public Security Ministry and several units of the People's Armed Police, a paramilitary force, but that they were not carrying weapons other than tear-gas grenades and launchers. That was in contrast to the Public Security and People's Armed Police forces in Dongshan village, 110 miles southwest of here, who opened fire on protesters in December with automatic rifles and pistols, killing several people. The killings were regarded as a frightening milestone in China's unrest; as far as is known, other violent protests -- more than 80,000 in 2005, according to an official count -- have been put down without gunfire.
As the rioting farmers scattered into Bo Mei's narrow lanes, police pursued, shooting tear-gas grenades, villagers said. "Canisters were falling right into people's courtyards," one said. "All they could do was run outside into the streets."
A tear-gas grenade struck and seriously injured a woman identified by farmers as Huang Huixin, 38, as she stood at the entrance to her home, they said. Huang, who was hit in the forehead, was admitted to Da Feng Hospital in nearby Heping town, according to friends.
Authorities sought to bar journalists from Bo Mei, turning back two Chinese television crews and a half-dozen other reporters, villagers said. An official at the Guangdong provincial propaganda department, mistakenly believing he was dealing with a reporter from Chinese state-controlled media, said orders were that nothing should be reported about the disorder in Bo Mei. Learning he was talking to The Washington Post, he shifted gears and said an investigation was under way but officials had not sifted through the facts enough to comment.
The two dikes were constructed in October with about $100,000 that villagers raised through donations. In repeated pleas to local and provincial authorities, villagers sought without success to win approval after construction was completed. Several villagers traveled to Beijing to petition the central government, also to no avail.
The dikes were essential, the villagers argued, because Bo Mei lies so far downstream that water flowing from hillsides to the South China Sea is exhausted before it reaches here. A couple died two years ago in a house fire, they recalled, because there was not enough water to douse the flames. More importantly, they argued, rice cultivation, the village mainstay, had become nearly impossible for lack of water for irrigation.
In a ruling March 14, provincial irrigation authorities said the dikes would not get approved and should be destroyed. The officials said villages downstream complained the dikes diminished their water supply. The ruling closed with an admonition to local government officials to handle the case carefully, lest it lead to violence.
"During the process, all parties should seriously explain the situation to the masses and strictly prevent this matter from growing," it said. "You should maintain the stability of the political environment and prevent any mass incidents from occurring."
After the destruction of the first dike led to the clashes, authorities at least temporarily abandoned efforts to destroy the second, which is on the other side of the village. "We were ready to give our lives in that battle, so they didn't dare move on the other dike," a villager said.
Meanwhile, several hundred villagers have taken up guard duty around the dike, camping day and night to prevent officials or earth-moving equipment from approaching. They milled about the site Friday afternoon under a chilly rain, with no uniformed police in sight.