China on Saturday broke its silence on violent protests in the south, acknowledging demonstrators were killed when police opened fire but giving a far lower death toll than the dozens claimed by residents. The official Xinhua news agency said police fired into a mob of explosives-lobbing protesters on Tuesday after being blockaded near Shanwei city, Guangdong province.Hundreds of armed villagers had earlier attacked them in a "serious violation of the law," Xinhua said quoting a Shanwei government report. "It became dark when the chaotic mob began to throw explosives at the police. Police were forced to open fire in alarm," the report said. "In the chaos, three villagers died, eight were injured with three of them fatally injured."
One villager has said on condition of anonymity that 30 people were killed and the New York Times quoted residents as saying that "as many as 20" died. If dozens have indeed died, it could be the deadliest use of force by Chinese authorities since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, albeit not the only incident on record.
The Xinhua report named three "instigators" and said they had organized an attack by more than 170 villagers armed with "knives, steel spears, sticks, dynamite powder, bottles filled with petroleum, and fishing detonators." Police were forced to fire tear gas at the protesters and arrested two before being blockaded, when they opened fire in panic.
The report said government departments were investigating the deaths and a special work group was looking into the incident. It said the "instigators" had been organizing armed protests since June, using local anger over the new power plant as an "excuse."
Residents have said the shootings happened during a clash between hundreds of members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police (PAP) and more than 1,000 villagers. They said the clash stemmed from a long-running dispute over compensation they want from the government for taking their land to build a coal-fired power plant. The project, sponsored by a company run by the provincial government, would also prevent villagers from using a nearby lake to earn income from fishing.
Tensions remained high on Saturday in the village of Dongzhou, near Shanwei, where hundreds of police remain stationed. Villagers were pleading for the return of their loved ones' bodies for burial but so far in vain, according to witnesses.
The incident gives renewed negative publicity to the PAP, a force of about one million that is recruited partly from among demobilized soldiers. Usually seen as a less lethal alternative to the regular armed forces when putting down domestic unrest, it has had its resources expanded dramatically in recent years. According to observers, this reflects the central authorities' desperation to avoid a repeat of the 1989 tragedy when soldiers trained for war were sent to battle unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing.
In December 2000, members of the PAP reportedly gunned down several Chinese Muslims amid heightened tension in a rural community of Shandong province in east China.