Chinese cotton farmers clash with police

The riot broke out Sept. 22 in Ili, a region in the northwest corner of the remote Xinjiang region, after police raided farmhouses looking for caches of hidden cotton, said local farmer Zhang Xiaolan.

Farmers were hiding the cotton to sell on the open market because they believed the local authority’s fixed price for the crop was too low, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper said. Authorities paid 9 yuan (US$1.2; euro0.85) per kilogram, but the same amount sells for 13.4 yuan (US$1.8; euro1.3) on the open market, it said.

The paper said local officials had earlier set up checkpoints around the settlement to make sure no cotton was smuggled.

“One farmer was caught and locked up at the police station for hiding cotton ... so hundreds of us gathered in front of the police station asking for his release,” Zhang said.

After a few hours, violence erupted with cotton farmers breaking police station windows and some 50 to 60 riot police with shields beating people to get them to disperse, she said.

Mass protests in China, particularly among the rural poor, are on the rise as they struggle to protect their rights amid a roaring, fast-changing economy.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported in July that about 385,000 rural people participated in “mass incidents” from January to September 2006. It did not define what constituted a mass incident.

The Post cited the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a monitoring group, as saying the incident in Ili occurred Sept. 23. Three witnesses said it happened a day earlier.

Local resident Zhong Cheng, 38, said he and his younger brother were at the police station to renew an identification card and got caught up in the clash.

His brother Zhong Yong “was just watching what was happening and was beaten on the knee by police,” he said. “We were handcuffed and ordered to kneel on the floor but my brother couldn’t move because of his injury, so they kept kicking him.”

Both were detained for four days and released without charge, he said. Zhong heard police say 29 people had been arrested while the Post said the number was 25.

The Post said 40 people were injured in the clash.

The farm settlement is under the authority of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which was set up 50 years ago to control and colonize Xinjiang. The body controls a significant swathe of the Xinjiang economy.

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