Police 'beat girl to death' in Chinese land clashes

A teenage girl was beaten to death in weekend clashes between protesting Chinese villagers and police wielding electric batons, media reported today.

Police reportedly clubbed the girl during a demonstration on Saturday, when hundreds of villagers from Sanjiao in Guangdong province rallied outside government offices and blocked a highway to protest allegedly inadequate compensation for appropriated land.

The parents of the girl – her age given as either 13 or 15 – have been paid hundreds of thousands of yuan to say she had died of a heart attack, the South China Morning Post and other Hong Kong newspapers said, citing unidentified villagers.

Authorities in the area have refused to comment on the reported death, although the official Xinhua News Agency issued a rare dispatch blaming the villagers for inciting the clashes, and denying that officers used violence.

Most villagers telephoned today refused to talk about the protest, apparently out of fear of retribution from authorities. One woman said she had heard of the girl’s death, but wouldn’t give her name or any details.

Chinese official media reports said about 100 villagers started the protest, which eventually drew at least 500 others.

“A few troublemakers started throwing bricks, stones and burning firecrackers at policemen and bystanders,” said the Zhongshan Daily newspaper, which reported five injuries but no deaths.

Zhongshan is a city that oversees Sanjiao.

The newspaper said yesterday that 25 people were questioned after Saturday’s incident, and that four have been detained. It said police reinforcements had been called in to keep order.

A waitress, who refused to give her name, said yesterday that she had heard that police checkpoints had been set up but had not seen any herself.

“There are no road blocks here today,” she said. “But some policemen are on patrol right now.”

Saturday’s incident came a month after authorities fired into a crowd of villagers in Dongzhou, also in Guangdong province, reportedly leaving up to 20 dead.

Protests in both areas focused on complaints of inadequate compensation for farmland, taken over by authorities for industrial use or property development.

Simmering anger has been erupting more frequently – and violently – in China’s vast, poverty-stricken countryside over land seizures, official corruption and pollution.

Government figures list 74,000 cases of rural unrest in 2004.