Six villagers were killed and eight badly hurt when several hundred allegedly hired thugs descended on a village in northern China and clashed with local residents over a land dispute, state press said yesterday.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning when five busloads of men ransacked Shengyou village in Hebei Province with hunting rifles, clubs, sharpened pipes and other weapons, Beijing News reported.
The attackers, wearing construction helmets, were mostly young men in their twenties allegedly hired by a local electricity company, it said.
Some 48 villagers were injured and hospitalized, the paper said. Among the dead was a 60-year-old villager who was killed by gunfire several hundred meters from where the clashes took place.
The village has refused to accept land compensation since 2003 from the Hebei Guohua Power Co which hopes to build a power plant on 26 hectares of village land, the paper said.
Parts of the battle, which lasted for about an hour, were videotaped by local villagers, it said.
The clash was not the first in the village.
On April 20 a similar incident took place in which some 20 youths attacked residents in the middle of the night, telling them to move off the land, the paper said.
One of the youths, identified as Zhu Xiaorui, was reportedly captured by the villagers at that time and has been in their custody ever since.
Zhu admitted that he was hired in nearby Beijing and paid 100 yuan (US$12) to come to the village and beat people up.
Officials in Dingzhou prefecture, which has jurisdiction over Shengyou village, have set up a special group to investigate the incident.
According to the paper, the power company is seeking to requisition 116 hectares from 13 villages in the region to build the power plant, with only Shengyou village refusing the compensation package.
It was unclear why so much land was needed for the plant.
The company and local police were not immediately available for comment.
Land requisition by the state has become one of China's sharpest social issues with an increasing number of evicted people in both urban and rural regions accusing governments of illegal land grabs they say are enriching the ruling elite.
In China, all land is owned by the state, giving local officials tremendous powers over land use rights.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS