Twenty-one people have been arrested in connection with a violent clash over a development project in southwestern China that left nine people dead and 24 seriously injured, the authorities announced.
The Oct. 14 incident was one of the deadliest such conflicts in recent years, and the extent of the brutality — some of the victims were set on fire — shocked a country that has has seen regular, if more limited, violence over land development.
Those arrested included six employees of a construction firm and 15 local residents, the Kunming city government said on Tuesday. The announcement added that the death toll had climbed from eight to nine after one severely injured worker died in a local hospital.
A long-running conflict between residents of Jinning County, a semirural area under the administration of Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, exploded into large-scale violence on Oct. 14. Hundreds of workers dressed in auxiliary police uniforms and carrying shields, tear gas and other anti-riot gear were sent to the village of Fuyou in Jinning County in an effort to intimidate residents and force them to drop their resistance to the construction of a logistics hub for manufactured goods.
Some villagers captured eight of the workers, tied them up and beat them, and then doused them with gasoline and set them on fire, the government says. Four of the eight detained workers were killed. Two other workers were beaten to death in the riot, along with two villagers.
The villagers had sought better compensation for giving up their land for the project and had complained about the flooding of vegetable fields as a result of the construction. They had blocked construction work since May, with violence between the two sides flaring over the summer. The Oct. 14 riot exploded as developers pushed to resume work on the project, the Kunming government said.
Conflicts between residents and developers are not uncommon in China, and local governments often push construction projects that can increase land sale revenues and create symbols of economic growth. Some local landholders hold out for higher compensation, and developers sometimes bribe local officials to back their projects.
In addition to those arrested for the violence in Jinning County, the Kunming Commission for Discipline Inspection, the local Communist Party antigraft agency, said that 16 officials had been suspended or removed from their posts while their links to the project were investigated. Li Jiaming, the head of Fuyou’s village committee, was arrested on Oct. 21 on suspicion of taking bribes.