Bloody clashes in China village

The blockade of Wukan village in southern China by riot police is continuing with more bloody clashes.

Villagers say officials have been stealing their land for decades

Villagers say officials have been stealing their land for decades.

So when a major deal involving yet more land was announced in September, their anger boiled over.

They marched to a nearby police post and violent clashes followed. Since then, Wukan has driven out local Communist leaders who villagers say are despots.

Local party secretary Xue Chang, who ran the fishing and farming village as a private fiefdom for over 40 years, fled following the September protests along with other Communist officials. For more than a week now, Wukan’s 13,000 residents have been living in open revolt against officialdom, blockaded by large numbers of riot police who stand outside the village perimeter.

The September riots followed the announcement of a lucrative housing project on more Wukan farm land.

Villagers tried to block workers from the construction site, and the following day truck-loads of police arrived. Dramatic film footage shows police kicking and beating villagers, who fought back, driving them away.

The current stand-off was triggered when Xue Jinbo, who was elected as a community leader after the Party figures were driven out, was arrested along with four other villagers.

“We have raised the issue for years and have petitioned the governments in Lufeng and in our capital Guangzhou many times but they ignore us,”said one villager, 44-year-old Mr Zhang, whose family’s farmland was taken from him in 1995. “When they sold my land, I didn’t get any compensation, they didn’t even tell me they sold it. “When I complained they told me my property deed was invalid,” he said, holding up the 1953 document his grandfather handed down to him.

Xue Chang, who is believed to be in his early seventies, ran a property development company with fellow leaders, which villagers claim colluded with other real estate firms to benefit from requisitioned land. They said more than half their traditional farmlands were requisitioned for Mr Xue’s projects – which included flooding some 46 hectares of rice paddy with salt water in a failed attempt to build a crab and shrimp farm.

“Xue Chang is a dictator who has ruled with an iron fist. He has good connections with the higher-ups,” said a villager surnamed Chen.

“He has instilled fear in everyone. If you even showed dissatisfaction in front of him, he would send thugs to beat you up. That was how he was able to rule for 42 years.”