BEIJING, Oct 05, 2007 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Cotton farmers in China's far west clashed with police and paramilitary guards over alleged price-fixing by local authorities, leaving 40 people injured, witnesses and a Hong Kong media report said Friday.
The riot broke out Sept. 22 in Ili, an area in the northwest corner of the remote Xinjiang region, after police raided farmhouses looking for caches of hidden cotton, local farmer Zhang Xiaolan said.
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 about 55 cents a pound, but the same amount sells for about 82 cents 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, Zhang 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 local residents 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.
"The main problem is that the purchase price is set too low, while the costs of growing cotton are getting too high," the Post quoted a local woman surnamed Cheng as saying. "The farmers cannot put up with it anymore."
A paramilitary official with the regional 7th Division Production and Construction Corps in Kuitun city confirmed farmers in the area rioted last month over cotton prices and said the incident was being investigated. He refused to give additional details and, like many Chinese officials, would only give his surname, Wang.
A protest against rising bus fares in the southern province of Hunan earlier this year reportedly drew 20,000 residents and prompted a harsh police crackdown in which witnesses said one person was killed.
