[Onthebarricades] CHINA: Unrest by demobilised soldiers, Xinjiang peasants

[Andy]

The wave of social unrest in China continues with what has been reportedin 
the west as a coordinated wave of protests by demobilised soldiers at three 
training centres across the country.  According to a human rights group, the 
soldiers at retraining centres destroyed equipment and set fires to protest 
poor living conditions.  Meanwhile, in the restive border province of 
Xinjiang, farmers clashed with police in protests over price-fixing.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jq3s2UlJDnKqOhZalN1sgJWx3IZw

Thousands of Ex-Soldiers Riot in China
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN - Sep 11, 2007
BEIJING (AP) - Thousands of demobilized Chinese soldiers rioted last week at 
training centers in at least three cities in an extremely rare series of 
coordinated demonstrations, a human rights group said Tuesday.
Former troops smashed classrooms, overturned cars and set fires to protest 
their poor living conditions, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for 
Human Rights and Democracy reported.
At least 20 people were injured and five arrested when riot police moved in 
to quell the disturbances, which started on the afternoon of Sept. 3, it 
said.
The center said about 2,000 ex-soldiers took part in the riots in the cities 
of Baotou, Wuhan, and Baoji, spread over a 775-mile stretch of eastern 
China. Reports posted on the Internet along with video clips appearing to 
show some of the violence said the disturbances were even more widespread, 
but gave few details.
The reported protests, which authorities refused to confirm, were notable 
for their level of coordination, something not seen on a nationwide scale 
since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and several other 
cities.
They also follow a string of recent campus unrest by students angered by 
poor living conditions or administrative changes that reduced the value of 
their diplomas.
However, they were the first incidents reported involving former soldiers, 
who are usually deferential and loyal to the communist regime.
Demobilized soldiers are frequently rewarded for their service with 
government jobs, and 6,000 of them were sent to 12 different railway schools 
in July for two years of training, the reports said.
However, they were angered by run-down dormitories, bad but expensive food 
and a lack of study materials, according to the center and Internet reports.
Dorm rooms did not have electrical outlets and students were charged 75 
cents each time they charged their mobile phones, the reports said.
The reports said classes have been suspended and police moved in to patrol.
Phones at the Baotou school rang unanswered, while officials who answered at 
the Baoji and Wuhan schools refused to comment on the reports or further 
identify themselves. The Railways Ministry that runs the schools did not 
immediately reply to faxed questions.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/255589

2,000 retired soldiers riot over poor living conditions

Equipment smashed, fires set at schools where demobilized Chinese troops 
being retrained

Sep 12, 2007 04:30 AM
BEIJING-About 2,000 former soldiers rioted in three Chinese cities last week 
over poor conditions in railway vocational schools where they were 
retraining, a rights group said.
Nearly 1,000 smashed equipment and set fires in their school in Baotou in 
Inner Mongolia and clashed with hundreds of police. At least 20 people were 
injured and five were arrested, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for 
Human Rights and Democracy said yesterday.
Similar riots occurred in Baoji, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, 
and Wuhan, capital of Hubei province in central China, on the same day, 
Sept. 3, the centre said in a faxed statement.
"Food in the schools is bad and expensive. The dormitories have no 
electrical outlets and the students need to pay to recharge their 
cellphones," it said.
An official at the Baoji school refused to confirm details, saying only that 
"everything has returned to normal.
"It was not a big deal, and things like that happen on campus a lot. But it 
was exaggerated by some people," he said. "I do not want to say anything 
more about it, because it would not be good for our school's reputation."
The Wuhan school would not comment. Phones at the Baotou school were 
disconnected.
An official at the Railway Ministry declined to comment.
The simultaneous incidents, in which school property was smashed or set on 
fire, were organized by some of the former soldiers, the centre said.
The rioters were among 6,000 discharged troops the ministry recruited in 
July to be trained at 12 railway vocational schools across the country, it 
said.
Troops discharged from the People's Liberation Army used to be offered good 
posts in the government or the police, but reforms in recent years have 
meant most of them have been left on their own after being demobilized, 
fuelling discontent.
It is rare in China for co-ordinated protests to hit several cities 
simultaneously, demonstrating the power of cellphones and the Internet, the 
Hong Kong-based group added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6921230,00.html

Demobilized Soldiers Riot in China

Friday September 14, 2007 11:16 AM
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press Writer
BEIJING (AP) - Demobilized soldiers rioted at a retraining center in 
northeastern China overnight, the latest in a series of apparently 
coordinated protests against living conditions, a teacher and a human rights 
monitoring group said Friday.
About 1,000 ex-soldiers began smashing up classrooms and dormitories at the 
Qiqihar Railway Institute late Thursday night using beer bottles, the Hong 
Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
It said they then attempted to break out of the school, heading for the city 
train station, but were blocked by police and armed special forces. The 
clashes intensified when additional demobilized soldiers flocked to the 
school after hearing a rumor that two ex-soldiers had been killed, the 
center said in a statement.
In all, at least 10 people were injured and five arrested, it said, without 
identifying the injured as rioters or police. A teacher at the school who 
gave only his surname, Wang, confirmed the clashes had occurred, but said 
the situation was now calm and classes had resumed.
However, Wang said all the demobilized soldiers had been removed from 
campus, confirming the Hong Kong center's claim that all 6,000 demobilized 
soldiers recently placed at railway institutes in several cities had been 
ordered to return to their homes.
``All the retired soldiers are gone,'' Wang told The Associated Press by 
phone from the school, 650 miles northeast of Beijing.
The violence comes just over one week after about 2,000 demobilized Chinese 
soldiers rioted at training centers in at least three cities.
The reported protests, which authorities refused to confirm, were notable 
for their level of coordination, something not seen on a nationwide scale 
since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and several other 
cities.
Ex-troops were angered by run-down dormitories, bad but expensive food and a 
lack of study materials, according to the center and Internet reports.
China has been steadily cutting the size of its 2.3 million-member armed 
forces, but many of those demobilized have reportedly struggled to find 
jobs.
About 560,000 officers and men were due to be retired from the service this 
year, with panicked servicemen paying large bribes to obtain jobs in the 
more developed cities for fear of being sent back to their hometowns, the 
Hong Kong center said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/17/asia/AS-GEN-China-Ex-Soldiers-Riot.php

Chinese ministry protests media reports on riots among ex-soldiers at 
training centers

The Associated Press
Published: September 17, 2007


BEIJING: China's Railway Ministry said recent disturbances at railway-owned 
training centers involved only a small number of people and that calm has 
been restored.
The ministry's comments, sent in a fax over the weekend, were its first 
since the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, 
a monitoring group, reported last week that thousands of demobilized 
soldiers sent to railway training centers had rioted in at least three 
cities.
The ministry said the incidents occurred, but that The Associated Press' 
reports about them were inaccurate. It took issue with an AP report that 
cited the Hong Kong center as saying that riot police were called in to 
quell the violence, resulting in 20 injuries and five arrests.
"Among the railway workers taking part in training, an extremely small 
number of students were dissatisfied with the training management, and 
because of that there arose improper behavior," the ministry said. "The 
situation has been appropriately handled and training has resumed."
The Hong Kong center reported Sept. 11 that the ex-soldiers rioted over poor 
living conditions. Camera phone footage of one riot posted on the Internet 
showed about 100 people rampaging through a cafeteria, picking up a picnic 
table with attached benches and throwing it through a window.
A training center administrator in a fourth city, Qiqihar, confirmed Friday 
that a similar incident had occurred at his school the day before and said 
the demobilized soldiers had been sent home.
The statement from the Railway Ministry's International Cooperation 
Department did not provide further details about the incidents or say how 
calm was restored. It accused the AP of "distorting the facts and 
maliciously carrying out false reports."
Asked Monday for additional clarification, an official at the International 
Cooperation Department again called the report incorrect, but refused to 
pinpoint the alleged errors or provide new facts. As is common among Chinese 
bureaucrats, the official identified himself only by his surname, Chen.
Protests by demobilized soldiers are an acutely sensitive issue for the 
Communist government, which dislikes demonstrations in general.
Soldiers were accorded a special status in the first decades of Communist 
rule. But free-market reforms have opened up new opportunities for many 
Chinese in the past 20 years, making military service attractive mainly to 
poorer Chinese and making it hard for the government to find them work once 
their service is over.
The riots were never reported in local media, underscoring the Communist 
Party's tight controls over all news media. Reports on unrest are especially 
sensitive ahead of next month's twice-a-decade party congress at which the 
policy agenda for the next five years is to be set out.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gXvGihtqGeXJhWFId-NwgaNdNGVgD8S2VV8G0

Chinese Farmers Protest Cotton Prices
By ALEXA OLESEN - 3 days ago
BEIJING (AP) - 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.