Police Clash With Ethnic Mongol Farmers Over Land Rights

Police clashed with ethnic Mongol villagers in late June and July in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in an unresolved land dispute that left dozens of villagers injured and tensions high. A local government official described the situation as "anarchy," according to a July 27 Reuters report. The Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) reports that hundreds of police used tear gas, grenades, and other explosives against villagers on July 21 and 23.

The dispute began in November 2004, when villagers in Qianjin village received no compensation for land acquired by a mining corporation, according to SMHRIC. The company is co-owned by a relative of the local Party vice secretary and a contractor from outside of the autonomous region. Violence erupted in late June 2005 after the mining company, with local official support, attempted to pave a new road across grazing lands belonging to the villagers.

Land disputes are a leading cause of social unrest in China, according to Yu Jianrong, the noted Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar and other analysts. In one such incident in June 2005, some 300 hired henchmen killed six and wounded 51 villagers in Hebei province after they refused to sell their land to the Hebei Guohua Power Company. Police have arrested or dismissed several local Party officials and power plant managers for their involvement in the incident. Chinese authorities also detained foreign journalists who were trying to report on the incident.