Land-grab protests grow
Thousands of residents of a south China village rallied yesterday in defiance of police who sealed off the area to contain a long-running feud over land grabs and anger over the death of a village leader in police custody.
The death of Xue Jinbo, 42, fanned tension in the small pocket of export-dependent Guangdong province and came after riot police fired water cannons and tear gas on Sunday to disperse thousands of stone-throwing villagers on the coast of the booming province.
Residents of Wukan village say hundreds of hectares of land have been acquired unfairly by corrupt officials in collusion with developers.