Chine : Des émeutes dans le sud après la mort d’un vendeur de fruits handicapé
Des émeutes ont éclaté dans une ville du sud de la Chine après la mort d’un vendeur de fruits handicapé qui aurait été battu à mort par la police municipale, rapporte le quotidien officiel China Daily.
Des milliers d’habitants de la ville d’Anshun, dans la province de Guizhou, ont exprimé leur colère en jetant des pierres sur la police et en renversant un véhicule gouvernemental, précise le journal.
10 policiers blessés
Les habitants soupçonnent des agents de la gestion urbaine, une sorte de police locale chargée de la lutte contre la mendicité et les infractions mineures, comme la vente à la sauvette, d’avoir frappé à mort le vendeur à l’entrée d’un marché.
Une trentaine de manifestants ont été arrêtés et dix policiers blessés, selon l’agence Chine nouvelle.
Les émeutes de ce genre se sont multipliées ces dernières semaines en Chine, qui a durci le contrôle d’internet par crainte d’une contagion des révoltes arabes.
Leur presse (Reuters), 27 juillet 2011.
Hundreds riot in China over vendor’s death
Hundreds of people rioted in southwest China after security forces reportedly beat a disabled street vendor to death, government authorities and state media said.
The crowd gathered in Guizhou province’s Anshun city Tuesday afternoon after the hawker died, the local government said, in an incident that bore a close similarity with riots last month in China’s southern industrial heartland.
A police spokesman said the one-legged man had argued with the “chengguan”, the official Xinhua news agency said Wednesday, referring to a municipal security force charged with regulating street hawking and similar activities.
Comments posted by netizens said the “chengguan” — two men and one woman — beat the disabled vendor to death. The Xinhua report said an investigation was under way to find out how he died.
Hong Kong-based Cable TV broadcast images of the unrest, showing overturned cars, people throwing stones at shield-wielding police, and injured, bleeding protesters.
It said police used water cannons to disperse the crowd, and that shooting sounds were heard, believed to be the firing of tear gas.
The “chengguan” are widely disliked in China, where they have a reputation for using brute force against civilians — in particular illegal street vendors.
Rumours that “chengguan” had beaten a street hawker to death and manhandled his pregnant wife in the southern province of Guangdong sparked violent rioting last month.
Television images at the time showed hundreds of police officers and armoured vehicles deployed on the streets, with people hurling bricks at local officials, vandalising ATMs and police posts.
These incidents are the latest in a recent bout of unrest in China sparked by perceived social injustices.
Earlier in June, hundreds of people battled police and destroyed cars in Guangdong after a factory worker was wounded in a knife attack over a wage row.
And in late May, thousands of ethnic Mongols protested in northern China for several days after the killing of a herder laid bare simmering tensions in the region.
Leur presse (Agence Faut Payer), 27 juillet 2011.
Riot in south China after death of fruit vendor
Angry residents in a southern Chinese city went on the rampage after officials apparently beat to death a disabled fruit vendor, a state media said on Wednesday, in the latest incident of social unrest in the world’s second-largest economy.
The China Daily said that thousands of people gathered on the streets of Anshun in Guizhou province on Tuesday afternoon, throwing stones at police and overturning a government vehicle.
The riot was sparked after urban management officers — a quasi-police force that enforces laws against begging and other petty offences — were suspected of beating the vendor to death, the newspaper said.
“The unidentified vendor died in front of the gate of a market … which led to the gathering of the local people,” it cited a government statement as saying.
“Before the incident occurred, urban management officers were working in the area,” it added, saying the statement gave no other details.
The newspaper showed a picture of an urban management vehicle which had been overturned, along with smashed windows and doors that had been torn off.
Xinhua news agency said around 30 protesters and 10 police officers were injured in the unrest.
The elder brother of the dead man has “consented to (an)autopsy and asked police to seek justice,” it added. “Police are questioning six city management staff members involved in the case.”
Footage on China’s popular Youku.com website, the country’s answer to YouTube, showed a large crowed gathered in the street, and what seemed to be a body on the ground shaded by umbrellas.
An overturned vehicle could be seen in the distance, along with many police officers and a black armored car used by China’s riot police.
Reuters could not authenticate the footage, nor when it was taken. Calls to the Anshun government seeking comment went unanswered.
“It was a total mess,” one onlooker surnamed Jiang told the China Daily. “The people threw stones at the police officers and my feet were hit by flying rocks.”
Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper said that the police used water cannons to disperse the protesters, who finally left the scene late in the evening.
In 2008, crowds stormed police and government headquarters in another part of Guizhou after allegations spread that police had covered up the rape and murder of a local teenage girl, seeking to protect the son of a local official.
China’s stability-obsessed rulers get nervous about any sort of protest or unrest.
Earlier this month, a court in the southern export hub of Guangdong province jailed 11 people for their roles in riots that hit a city there in June.
In 2007, China had more than 80,000 “mass incidents,” up from more than 60,000 in 2006, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Many involved no more than dozens protesting against local officials over complaints about corruption, abuse of power, pollution or poor wages.
No authoritative estimates of the number of protests, riots and mass petitions since then have been released.
Leur presse (Reuters), 27 juillet 2011.