One Riot Breaks Ground in China

Sanzhou protest leaders, who described what happened here on condition of anonymity because they feared arrest, said busloads of police waited nearby as the riot flared on June 13 and 14. A half-dozen policemen who looked on were not armed, they said.

The villagers said that, although Sanzhou's land confiscations began with decisions made in the mid-1990s, it wasn't until recently that they recognized how much of their land was ticketed for residential and industrial development. In the past few years, a large pond where farmers grew carp has been drained in hopes it can become an industrial park. Municipal food warehouses have been built on former rice paddies. Nearby, a thermos bottle factory has arisen, with an adjacent dormitory for the farmers' children, who make up the workforce.

Farmers seemed most outraged by what they said was use of their compensation by village officials to build a bridge across the fish pond. Needlessly large sums were allocated for the bridge, which is designed as a simple stretch of concrete across a 200-yard bog, they said. "They say they need 10 times what they really need, then they take the difference," a villager said with a sneer.

The head of the Shunde district investigation department, which has jurisdiction over Sanzhou, declined to comment, directing inquiries to the Guangdong provincial propaganda department. Officials there, who according to local reporters have banned reporting on Sanzhou's riot, said they had no information.

Since January, villagers have blocked the bridge-building project, which stands unfinished in the form of two concrete blocks baking under the heavy southern China sun. Many farmers and their wives have sat daily under a tent-like shelter to prevent bulldozers from returning. Banners have been stretched across the tent proclaiming the farmers will not move until they get adequate compensation for their land.

Protest leaders heard earlier this month that a real-estate developer was about to turn over to buyers possession of apartments in a building constructed on another slice of the confiscated land. The developer, they said, sent two dozen private guards in civilian clothes to protect a little sales office on June 11. By June 13, the number had risen to more than 200, they said. Villagers called local police to intervene against the tough-looking outsiders, they said, but got no response.

As the confrontation grew, a number of villagers moved on the apartment building and, threatening to beat them, drove away workers putting on the final touches. The guards counterattacked, and the fight was on. Villagers said they rang gongs, raising the alarm, and by the end of the day 10,000 local farmers and their families were on the scene.

They attacked the sales office, breaking windows and driving away saleswomen. Some used bottles of sulfuric acid to scare off the security guards, they acknowledged, and many swung sticks and threw stones, forcing the guards to take shelter inside the sales office behind locked doors.

Several local officials who showed up to calm the situation were prevented from leaving, the villagers said, and were held all night and into the next afternoon before the bargain was reached.

As part of the deal, the villagers were to negotiate with the developer, who promised to stop construction pending an agreement on compensation. The developer insisted, however, that the level of compensation was a matter between the farmers and the village committee. But the village leadership has refused to meet, protest leaders said, and the local party secretary has dropped out of sight.

"It's been a long time since we saw him," one peasant activist said.