A Chinese activist who witnessed a clash between farmers and police in which one person was reportedly killed has been taken away and warned by police not to speak with the media, his friends said yesterday.
Zhang Zilin (
Zhang told reporters that baton-wielding riot police beat the protesters -- including women, children and the elderly -- who fought back with bricks and rocks.
On Tuesday night, Zhang was continuing to talk by phone with reporters and human-rights activists when police and officials confronted him.
He began shouting "They're coming'" and his phone was temporarily disconnected, said fellow activist Wen Yan (
Another activist, Ding Yi, said Zhang told him yesterday morning he was being held in an undisclosed location.
"He said he did not have any freedom and had been told by police and government officials not to speak with the media," said Ding, who along with Zhang and Wen are part of an informal network of human-rights activists.
Protests have risen sharply across China in recent years as ordinary Chinese vent anger over official corruption, a yawning rich-poor gap and land confiscations.
On Sunday, in Guangdong Province, police dispersed 1,000 protesters in Dongzhou in the latest standoff in a long-running land dispute, the New York-based Human Rights Watch reported yesterday.
Officials in Hunan Province, where Zhushan is located, appeared to be applying standard procedures in suppressing the protest sparked by the doubling of bus fares, calling in riot police and trying to silence activists.
Villagers said yesterday that the area was still sealed off and policemen were patrolling the streets.
Police had put up notices asking people who participated in the demonstration to turn themselves in.
Zhang's cellphone either rang busy or was turned off on yesterday. Telephone calls to police and government officials in Zhushan and Yongzhou were not answered.
"I don't dare step out of my home," said a villager surnamed Li, who refused to give his full name or other details for fear of retaliation.
The Xinhua news agency issued an account sharply at odds with that of witnesses who had said a student was killed in Monday's melee.
Xinhua said that no one had died in the clash and that peace had been restored and "local life has resumed."
Such conflicting accounts are common in China, where officials often seek to cover up misdeeds or to restore calm and where ordinary Chinese tend to believe rumor over the government-controlled media.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS