CHINA: Farmers in the Chinese village of Huaxi, the scene of violent clashes between locals and police last year over land rights granted illegally to 13 chemical plants, are to launch a landmark legal action to win back their land.
In an act of defiance being repeated across the country in various ways but whose causes are nearly always the same - land grabs, pollution and corruption - tens of thousands of farmers stopped about 1,500 police and officials from entering Huaxi, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, on April 10th.
The authorities had come to destroy roadblocks erected by villagers blocking deliveries to and from the plants, which villagers said were poisoning their crops and making their children sick.
"Now the dispute is about the land. They took it illegally - the court said that - so now we want it back," said Wang Zhongfa, a slight, determined figure who has become de facto spokesman for the Huaxi petitioners.
He was in Beijing recently to talk to a number of legal experts about taking the case.
Four villagers were jailed over the incident, but, wary of local anger, the sentences were lighter than expected and the court ruled that the land had been granted by the local officials to the chemical companies illegally.
Mr Wang reckons he has been marked as a troublemaker, but ironically, his detention by police shortly before the Huaxi riots meant he avoided being branded a ringleader in the riot. Conviction could have brought a heavy sentence, particularly as there were police casualties.
In 2000, when many of the plants were built, he was jailed for nine months for trying to sabotage their construction.
The Huaxi riot became famous among local activists in China and was one of the first of a number of such disturbances as rampant industrialisation leads to clashes between authorities and those left behind by development - the farmers and migrant workers who make up two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion people.
In a sign of just how sensitive the Huaxi story was, the Zhejiang provincial government took the rare step of punishing eight officials from the nearby city of Dongyang and Huaxi in December for failing to "preserve social harmony".
"It seems we have won the first phase, we stopped the factories," Mr Wang said. "Life has almost returned to normal, quite stable. Also, the central government is aware of our case."
Almost back to normal, but not totally. Three of the 13 factories originally on the site were still operating partially, while six had moved elsewhere and the rest were lying empty.
"But even the three that are still there are polluting our environment. One is a dye factory, the other is a plastics plant and the third is a textile factory," said Mr Wang.
Of the nine villagers sentenced over the Huaxi incident, four received suspended sentences, which are often not served in China.
One person, Wang Xinwang, who turned government witness, was acquitted.
All nine said they were tortured in custody. Mr Wang said five of the men would appeal.
Huaxi is a classic example of how China's booming economy, as well as lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, has also generated social unrest.
China's leaders are rattled and in speech made in December, but only released to the Chinese media this week, prime minister Wen Jiabao warned that land grabs by corrupt officials could put pressure on the Communist Party's grip on power.
"We absolutely cannot commit a historic error over land problems. In some areas, illegal seizures of farmland without reasonable compensation have provoked uprisings," the prime minister said.
This week, Chinese public security officials announced that the number of disturbances to public order rose 6.6 per cent last year to 87,000.
Among the main contributors to the rise in public disorder have been villagers and farmers outraged at land grabs, migrant workers who have not received many months, sometimes years, of back pay, and workers laid off by privatisation programmes at state-owned companies who want some kind of social welfare.
In Shanwei, in the southern province of Guangdong, at least nine villagers were arrested last month over riots linked to a land dispute, during which police shot dead at least three protesters.
Last week dozens of villagers were injured, and a 15-year-old girl killed, in days of clashes with police over a land dispute in Zhongshan, also in Guangdong.