Monday, December 19, 2005 - 12:00 AM
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By Alexa Olesen
The Associated Press
BEIJING — Chinese state media on Sunday published the names of three villagers killed by police during a protest over the seizure of land for a power plant and provided a rare and vivid account of the small-town politics that led to the bloody confrontation.
Rights groups and activists had been calling for the government to publish a list of those killed in the Dec. 6 shootings in Dongzhou, a village about 60 miles northeast of Hong Kong in Guangdong province. The government says three people were killed; residents said up to 20 died.
The Guangzhou Daily Newspaper identified the three men killed by police as Lin Yidui, 26, Jiang Guangge, 35, and Wei Jin, 31. Eight people were injured, the paper said, but it did not name them.
The violence was the deadliest in a series of confrontations throughout China between police and villagers who are angry over land seizures for construction of factories, shopping malls and other projects.
Villagers say the protest erupted over complaints that residents got little or no compensation for land taken by the government for construction of a power plant.
According to Dongzhou residents, police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting inadequate land compensation. Villagers said many of the protesters were unarmed and that dozens of people are still missing.
The victim's names were revealed in a 4,000-word transcript of an interview conducted Saturday with a spokesman for the Shanwei city government. His name was not given. Chinese media have given scant coverage to the incident, with a few articles published by the official Xinhua News Agency and Guangdong papers.
The government spokesman told the Guangzhou Daily that in November 2004, the local land-resources bureau arranged compensation payments to 1,654 villagers but that 25 households had refused the deal. He did not say how much money had been offered.
Disgruntled villagers blocked workers from entering the plant-construction site for nearly three months before the dispute erupted into a riot Dec. 6 as police confronted villagers armed with knives, wooden clubs and Molotov cocktails, he was quoted as saying.
By Saturday, order had been restored and construction on the power plant had resumed, the spokesman told the paper.
Chinese leaders have shown unusual concern about Dongzhou, detaining the commander whose forces opened fire and promising to deal with local grievances.
The Guangzhou Daily said the commander "was forced to fire warning shots" in an effort to subdue the crowd and that darkness and chaos were to blame for the killings.