Reservations about...

[Griff]

Reservations about gun-grabbers, no property rights, and state power.

The villagers are demanding free elections following yet another government land grab. They say armed thugs sent by their own village chief attacked the community to pave the way for a new factory on their farmland.


"When they got out of their cars, they used hoes to attack us," said Li, 60, who is nursing a broken knee from a brick he says a thug threw at him. "We acted in self-defense and threw rocks at them. Afterward, villagers came out and rang gongs to alert people."

A cellphone video shows the villagers fighting back with bamboo poles from a construction site. A thug, whom villagers identified as a plainclothes police officer, fired warning shots.

But the villagers easily outnumbered the thugs, chased them into a field, and then destroyed more than two dozen of their vehicles.