Thousands Of Chinese Farmers Riot Over Factories Polluting Their Crops

[hatrack]

"THOUSANDS of Chinese farmers overturned buses, smashed cars and attacked policemen during a riot in a village in eastern China against chemical plants that they say are destroying their crops.

Villagers said that 3,000 police officers armed with electric batons and teargas descended on the village of Huaxi before dawn on Sunday to clear roadblocks that villagers had set up to stop deliveries to and from chemical plants built on land where rice and vegetable farms once stood. The scene yesterday was one of complete devastation and anarchy: 40 buses lay smashed in the grounds of a local school and 14 cars were piled upside down in an alley, some draped with police uniforms. There were unconfirmed reports that two of the elderly protesters died during efforts to disperse them, and more than a hundred people were treated for minor injuries in hospital.

In a country where dissent normally brings swift retribution, the weekend riots were just the latest clashes between local authorities and farmworkers, who feel marginalised by the extraordinary growth of China’s economy and the expansion of its industrial base deeper into rural areas. The 13 chemical plants in Zhejiang, built during the current economic boom and operational since 2002, produce fertiliser, dyes and pesticides. Farmers say that waste from the factories is poisoning the wells that provide their drinking water and that the plants periodically release clouds of stinging gas. They also claim that the effluents are causing stillborn babies and birth defects.

EDIT

In China, farmers do not own the land; they receive 30-year leases from the State that allows the Government to reallocate the land for industrial use without the consent of the farmers if it is approved by the village committee. Farmers have been given compensation, but for many this is not enough. “It’s not compensation we want, we don’t want these plants beside us,” Wang Weikang, a smallholder, said. “I tried to grow cauliflower last year, but the plant didn’t grow bigger than a walnut before it shrivelled and died. The groundwater is completely poisoned.”

EDIT

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1565554,00.html

[Massacure]

1. The Chinese government has to increase pollution regulations eventually.

China is already a pigsty. There is no way the country can endure that for much longer.

[jpak]

2. If you really want to see what America would be like

without its environmental laws - just look a China...

When is the last time you actually smelled (and choked on) unadulterated auto exhaust???