Thousands of villagers in southern China clashed with police during a protest against inadequate compensation for farmland flooded by a dam project, a news report said yesterday.
Hong Kong's Mingpao newspaper reported that about 10,000 villagers repeatedly scrapped with police over a four-day period last week when they tried to petition the local government in Guangxi Province's Yantan Township and to hold demonstrations near the dam.
From June 1 through June 4, villagers carrying banners and shouting slogans surrounded the Yantan No. 2 Hydroelectric Power Station's staff residence and marched to the dam site to demand higher compensation, the newspaper said.
It said several hundred soldiers and armed police were trucked in to help contain the protests and five villagers were injured in clashes. Several people were arrested, the report said, without giving numbers.
The paper said Yantan farmland was flooded several years ago when the dam caused the Red River to overflow its banks.
The report said villagers were enraged when the central government allegedly gave Yantan officials 2.8 million yuan (US$370,000) last year to help compensate residents -- but only a portion of it was distributed.
Villagers claimed that local officials pocketed some of the money.
The Mingpao said that villagers had been sporadically protesting the situation since April, but that last week's demonstrations were the largest yet.
The government has been giving every villager a subsidy of 30 yuan per month regardless of how much land they lost, it said.
A Yantan villager, surnamed Li, said that the situation had calmed down and that local officials were negotiating with the villagers, who were demanding 150 yuan a month.
MILITARY BOOST: The procurement was planned after Washington recommended that Taiwan increase its stock of air defense missiles, a defense official said yesterday Taiwan is planning to order an additional four PAC-3 MSE systems and up to 500 missiles in response to an increasing number of missile sites on China’s east coast, a defense official said yesterday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the proposed order would be placed using the defense procurement special budget, adding that about NT$1 trillion (US$32,88 billion) has been allocated for the budget. The proposed acquisition would include launchers, missiles, and a lower tier air and missile defense radar system, they said The procurement was planned after the US military recommended that Taiwan increase
POLITICAL AGENDA: Beijing’s cross-strait Mid-Autumn Festival events are part of a ‘cultural united front’ aimed at promoting unification with Taiwan, academics said Local authorities in China have been inviting Taiwanese to participate in cross-strait Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations centered around ideals of “family and nation,” a move Taiwanese academics said politicizes the holiday to promote the idea of “one family” across the Taiwan Strait. Sources said that China’s Fujian Provincial Government is organizing about 20 cross-strait-themed events in cities including Quanzhou, Nanping, Sanming and Zhangzhou. In Zhangzhou, a festival scheduled for Wednesday is to showcase Minnan-language songs and budaixi (布袋戲) glove puppetry to highlight cultural similarities between Taiwan and the region. Elsewhere, Jiangsu Province is hosting more than 10 similar celebrations in Taizhou, Changzhou, Suzhou,
TWO HEAVYWEIGHTS: Trump and Xi respect each other, are in a unique position to do something great, and they want to do that together, the US envoy to China said The administration of US President Donald Trump has told Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) “we don’t want any coercion, but we want [the Taiwan dispute] resolved peacefully,” US ambassador to China David Perdue said in a TV interview on Thursday. Trump “has said very clearly, we are not changing the ‘one China’ policy, we are going to adhere to the Taiwan Relations Act, the three communiques and the ‘six assurances’ that were done under [former US president Ronald] Reagan,” Perdue told Joe Kernen, cohost of CNBC’s Squawk Box. The act, the Three Joint Communiques and the “six assurances” are guidelines for Washington
DEEPENING TIES: The two are boosting cooperation in response to China’s coercive actions and have signed MOUs on search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling efforts Taiwan and Japan are moving to normalize joint coast guard training and considering the inclusion of other allies, the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. Both nations’ coast guards in June sent vessels to the seas south of the Sakishima Islands to conduct joint training, the report said, adding that it was the second joint maritime training exercise since the nations severed formal diplomatic ties in September 1972. Japan dispatched the Nagoya Coast Guard’s Mizuho, a 134m, 6,000-tonne patrol vessel which can carry a helicopter, while the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sent the 126m, 4,000-tonne Yunlin, one of its largest vessels, the report
RSS