Hundreds riot over village election in China, group says

Dec 12, 2008, 11:16 GMT

Beijing - More than 1,000 people confronted at least 300 Chinese riot police on Friday after they were angered by alleged vote-buying in a village election, a rights group reported.

About 50 villagers were injured and police detained some 200 protestors after the riot on Friday morning in Pingyao county in the northern province of Shanxi, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.

The election for new members of the village committee in Wangjiazhuang, in Pingyao's Nanzheng township, was scheduled to take place on Saturday.

But the villagers rallied after reports that candidates backed by the township government had tried to buy votes, the centre said.

It was not clear if the election would still go ahead on Saturday.

Chinese leaders claim that their commitment to grassroot elections, greater openness in governance, and more democracy within the ruling Communist Party show that the nation is making progress.

But they have suggested several times in recent months that the 'socialist modernisation' stage - and therefore the absence of multi-party democracy - would last about 100 years.

The government has promised to improve its system of direct elections for village heads and village committees, with a possible extension to township and even provincial level in the future.

Wang Jinhua of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in August said that problems of corruption and vote buying affected a 'small number' of elections, estimating the number skewed by vote buying at 3 per cent or less.

Communist Party members occupy 56 per cent of the seats on village committees and 48 per cent of those on the urban committees, Wang said.

About 73 million of China's 1.3 billion people are Communist Party members.

Last month, Yao Lifa, a legal activist in the central province of Hubei, said police held him for nearly two weeks to prevent him from advising candidates and voters in local elections.