8 killed, 18 injured in China land dispute

Reporting from Beijing —  During World War II, Gao Shangpei fought Japanese soldiers invading his hometown. This week, the 85-year-old said he found himself taking up arms again as men wielding steel pipes and knives invaded his village over a land dispute, sparking clashes that left eight people dead and 18 others injured.

The incident in southwest Yunnan province appears to be one of the bloodiest confrontations in recent years between property developers and local villagers.

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FOR THE RECORD

9:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post indicated that the confrontation occurred on Monday. It occurred on Tuesday. It also stated that the local government issued a statement on the incident on Tuesday. The statement was issued on Wednesday.

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In a statement Wednesday, the local government said eight people were killed in Fuyou village when staff from a local project developer clashed with villagers. But locals said “thugs” hired by the developer stormed the village and tried to beat up residents who had vowed to protect their land till death.

“Around 2:30 p.m. [Tuesday], a group of over 1,000 thugs hired by the developer came to our village carrying steel pipes and long knives,” Gao said in a phone interview. “When we tried to stop them, they started to beat local villagers, including women and old people, indiscriminately.”

According to Gao, more than 2,000 of his fellow residents joined in the fray. After two villagers were killed, locals got so angry that they captured and killed some of the attackers, he said.

Pictures circulated on Chinese social media site Weibo showed burned bodies of several men in blue uniforms whose hands and legs were bound. The photos showed some were carrying shields with the word “police” on them, and a portable tear gas launcher was visible in one picture. The authenticity of the pictures could not be independently verified and local police only arrived at the scene after the deadly clash took place.

The Chinese publication Caixin identified the two deceased villagers as Shu Huanzhang and Zhang Shun but gave no further details. The local government’s statement said six people from the developer’s side were killed and a total of 18 people were injured from both sides.

The land in question was designated for the construction of a new logistics center, part of the government’s plan to relocate wholesale markets to the area from the provincial capital, Kunming, 20 miles away.

Many locals opposed the construction plan as soon as the government announced it in 2012. A total of 12 villages have been affected by the construction plan, according to a petitioning letter supposedly written by representatives of those villages on popular Chinese forum KDnet.net. The letter accuses local officials of confiscating their land illegally and taking bribes from the project’s developers.

After trying to petition and failing to get the local government to address their grievances, locals decided to take matters in their own hands and established teams to patrol the village.

“I went to Beijing three times in 2012 and tried to hand in our material to different government departments. But we didn’t hear back from anyone afterward,” Gao said.

When the armed men surrounded his village, Gao said, he didn’t bother to call the local police. “They breathe through the same nose with the developers. They’re useless,” he said. “The local party secretary, Chen Haiyan, is not a good person. The local hospital even refused to treat injured villagers yesterday; we had to send them to Kunming for treatment.”

Beijing-based lawyer Li Xiongbing has represented a number of clients in land-confiscation disputes with local governments. In most cases, he said, there was not much he could do to help the villagers.

“Under the current system in China, sometimes it’s inevitable for the villagers to come down to using their body and life to defend their home,” Li said in an interview. “The local judicial system, including the court and the police, are all controlled by the local government. It’s impossible for the villagers to seek justice through a local court.”

In China’s legal system, cases can only be appealed once to a higher court, which means most such land cases go no further than a city-level court. If cases could advance as far as the Supreme Court in Beijing, Li believes, they could be adjudicated more strictly in accordance with Chinese law.

As with many other similar land-confiscation disputes, the violent turn in Fuyou village has catalyzed intervention by higher-level government authorities. After Tuesday’s deadly clash, the local government in Kunming said provincial officials had been dispatched to the scene.

“Why only through violent clashes and people getting killed can those problems get resolved?” wrote Beijing-based property market columnist Ma Yuecheng in a post on Weibo.

Tommy Yang in the Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.