China has started the trial of a local Chinese Communist Party chief for his role in one of the bloodiest in a wave of rural riots to strike the country in recent years, state media said yesterday.
In June, hired thugs killed six villagers and injured dozens of others staging a sit-in on land confiscated by a state-owned power plant to protest against low compensation in Shengyou Village, Hebei Province.
"The open trial of the 27 defendants involved in the June 11 case, including former Dingzhou city party secretary He Feng, began yesterday," the Beijing News said. Dingzhou is the city with jurisdiction over Shengyou.
The violence in Shengyou was one of a series of protests in rural areas, many of which have focused on land rights as rapid development encroaches on farmland. Corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor have also been flashpoints for unrest.
The government has said China saw some 74,000 protests last year involving 100 or more people.
All 27 in the Dingzhou case were charged with "intentionally inflicting injury upon others," the Beijing News said. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
He was sacked along with the Dingzhou mayor Guo Zhenguang after a Beijing newspaper broke the news of the clash. The report did not say if Guo was also on trial.
Previous reports said police had arrested 31 and detained another 131 at the time. The villagers later won back the land when the government decided not to go ahead with the requisition.
However, Beijing remains virtually silent 10 days after police shot and killed at least three villagers in a land dispute similar to Shengyou's in Guangdong Province.
The government said the police commander who gave the order to shoot had been detained.
But it also rounded up those involved in the protest and has insisted "instigators" were to blame for the violence.
Meanwhile, a woman who rose in the ranks of provincial politics has been sentenced to death for taking bribes, state media reported yesterday.
Han Guizhi, the former deputy party secretary for Heilongjiang Province, was sentenced on Thursday to death with a two-year reprieve, the China Daily said. The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court found Han guilty of accepting 7 million yuan (US$875,000) in bribes between 1992 and 2002, the newspaper said.
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