News: Chinese Village Surrounded After Shootings

BEIJING – Authorities have surrounded and sealed off a village in
southern China where police fatally shot protesters in a dispute over
land use this week, villagers said Friday.

Thousands
of people took part in Tuesday’s demonstration in Dongzhou, a village
in Guangdong province, international rights groups said. They were
anger over plans to construct a wind power plant on local land.

Police fired into the crowd, killing at least two people, the reports said. Villagers have put the number as high as 10.

State media have made no mention of the violence and both provincial
and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is
typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media….

Rural protests have multiplied in recent months as anger comes to a
head over corruption, land seizures and a yawning wealth gap that
experts say now threatens social stability. The government says about
70,000 such conflicts occurred last year, although many more are
believed to go unreported.

The clashes have also become increasingly violent, with injuries
sustained on both sides and huge amounts of damage done to property as
protesters vent their frustration in face of indifferent or bullying
authorities.

"These reports of protesters being shot dead are chilling,"
Catherine Baber, deputy Asia director at Amnesty International, said in
a statement Thursday. "The increasing number of such disputes over land
use across rural China, and the use of force to resolve them, suggest
an urgent need for the Chinese authorities to focus on developing
effective channels for dispute resolution." Full Article