China: Thousands of Chinese farmers overturned buses, smashed cars and attacked policemen during a riot in a village in eastern China against chemical plants they say are destroying their crops.
Villagers said 3,000 police officers descended on the village of Huaxi before dawn on Sunday. Armed with electric batons and tear gas, they had come to clear roadblocks the villagers had set up to stop deliveries to and from 13 chemical plants built where rice and vegetable farms once stood.
The scene yesterday was one of devastation and anarchy - 40 buses lay smashed in the grounds of a local school, while 14 cars were piled upside down in a side alley, some draped with police uniforms. There was debris everywhere and no sign of law and order.
The chemical plants produce fertiliser, dyes and pesticides and farmers say waste from the factories is poisoning the well water they drink and periodically causing stinging clouds of gas.
The effluents are also allegedly causing stillborn babies and birth defects.
"I'm afraid my children won't live to reach my age. I want my land back, I want my food back and I want my water back," said one 60-year-old woman with the surname Wang, which is carried by one-third of the village of 30,000.
She was speaking at a makeshift shelter put up at the local old people's association, which displayed police riot shields, identity cards and helmets, as well as machetes and scissors which the locals said had been used against them.
Elderly women were eager to tell their tale of the night they drove the police out of the village. The atmosphere was jubilant.
Soon after leaving the village, I was stopped by police on the highway on the way to the county town of Dongyang and detained by government officials for almost six hours.
In a surreal experience I was shown wonderful hospitality and fed delicious food before my notes were confiscated and photographs deleted from my camera. I then signed a statement saying I had entered the village illegally and broken Chinese reporting laws.
There were unconfirmed reports of two deaths during the riots. The local hospital could not confirm the reports and none of the villagers actually named a victim.
Recent riots in China have been sparked by reports of such incidents that have turned into demonstrations of public anger with local corruption or abuse of privilege.
Dongyang government spokesman Chen Qixian denied that anyone had died in the riot. He said 1,000 officials had taken part in the operation to remove the roadblocks.
"Of those 1,000, around 100 were police. The rest included officials from the Dongyang Women's Association. They were sent in because we did not want to be accused of manhandling elderly female protesters," he said.
The roadblocks were set up on March 24th and had stopped production at the chemical plants, which have been operating since 2002.
Local hospitals treated 128 people, of whom 36 are still hospitalised. Of these, three were villagers and the rest police or cadres. Five of the injuries were serious, Mr Chen said.
The factories have suspended operations for the time being because the workers are scared. Some of them are locals.
Many come from Dongyang and go back every night in the shuttle bus. The factories also employ migrant workers.
In China, farmers do not own the land they till. Instead, they receive the land from the government on 30-year leases, which means when the government wants to change the use of the land, it does not need to ask individual farmers but can ask the village committee, which is what it did in Huaxi.
Mr Chen insisted they had tried to contact as many farmers as possible to assuage their fears and that the purchase of the land had been approved by the majority of the village committee.
He promised that the government would take steps to ensure the plants followed regulations on pollution and said they would be shut down if they broke the rules.
He also said the city would try and gather evidence to jail the "handful of people" involved in causing the trouble.
Farmers have been given compensation for land lost, but for many this was not enough.
"It's not compensation we want, we don't want these plants beside us," said one smallholder, Wang Weikang.
"I tried to grow cauliflower last year, but the plant didn't grow bigger than a walnut before it shrivelled and died. The groundwater is completely poisoned," he said.
"When the village committee agreed to rent the land to the chemical companies, they didn't tell many of the villagers. A few years ago the county leaders told the villagers to go home, they guaranteed they would solve the problem and ensure the plants reach an adequate environmental standard. But it never happened."
Accidents are a regular occurrence around the plants, villagers say.
"Last year a pipeline exploded around 500 metres away from a vegetable market. Everyone in the market had tears running down their faces, the chemicals in the air irritated their eyes so badly," said another villager, also with the surname Wang.
Land-grabbing and rural land rights are major political issues in China and the Beijing government has made public commitments to bridge the gap between urban rich and rural poor.
"In the creek in the village, you get itchy feet when you cross it barefoot and the fish from the Huashui river doesn't taste good anymore," said one old man.
He too was called Wang.