Chinese police, troops open fire on village riot

By Edward Cody
THE WASHINGTON POST
Friday, December 09, 2005

DONGZHOU, China — Paramilitary police and anti-riot units have opened fire with pistols and automatic rifles for the past two nights on rioting farmers and fishermen who have attacked them with gasoline bombs and explosive charges, according to residents of the small coastal village of Dongzhou.

The sustained volleys of gunfire, unprecedented in a wave of peasant uprisings in the past two years in China, killed between 10 and 20 villagers and injured more, residents said. The toll was uncertain, they said, because some villagers have disappeared, and it isn't known for sure whether they were killed, wounded or just hiding.

The tough response by riot troops and the People's Armed Police deviated sharply from previous government tactics against unrest in Chinese villages and industrial suburbs. As far as is known, previous riots have been put down with heavy use of truncheons and tear gas, but without firearms.

This time, according to a villager who heard and saw what happened, police responded to the launching of explosives — homemade bottle bombs and explosive charges that local fishermen normally use to stun fish — by firing repeatedly "very rapid bursts of gunfire" over a period of several hours Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Some villagers reported seeing People's Armed Police carrying AK-47 assault rifles, one of the Chinese military's standard-issue weapons. There were no reports of violence Thursday night.

The villagers who rose up against land confiscations in Dongzhou, a community of 10,000 residents 14 miles southeast of Shanwei city, in Guangdong province near Hong Kong, also opened a new chapter in unrest by using explosives. In previous riots, attacks against police were limited to pelting them with stones and bricks or setting fire to official vehicles.

The Communist Party and city administration of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over Dongzhou, held meetings Thursday on the violence, officials said. A city spokesman, however, refused to discuss what happened and declined to give his name.

There likewise was no public response from the Guangdong provincial Communist Party and government, which have been hit by several long-running and violent confrontations over land confiscations during the past year. As was the case in most previous unrest, China's government-censored media haven't reported on the violence in Dongzhou.

The long-simmering conflict in Dongzhou is over disputed land confiscations and what farmers called inadequate compensation payments. Authorities, exercising eminent domain, seized farmers' fields to build a wind-driven electricity-generating plant on a hill overlooking the village. The plant would be part of a $700 million electricity development project to supply the growing power needs of Shanwei and surrounding towns.

The villagers, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the current round of violence was set off when authorities arrested three village leaders who had gone to the hillside plant site Tuesday afternoon to lodge a complaint. Before long, they said, several thousand villagers gathered on the hilltop to demand their release.

Those villagers were dispersed by tear gas, residents said, but shortly afterward, authorities dispatched between 400 and 500 more riot police into the village as reinforcements. That contingent was met by several thousand angry villagers, they added, and police again resorted to tear gas about dusk. This time, however, some villagers reacted by pelting police with the explosives, according to witnesses, and the police responded with sustained pistol and automatic weapons fire.

A similar confrontation occurred Wednesday evening on the main village road, leading to more attacks with gasoline bombs and several more hours of shooting, the villagers said. "The police kept on shooting until they drove away all the villagers," witness said.