CHINA:Chinese officials have secretly executed a demonstrator who took part in a protest in 2004 against a hydro-electric dam in the southwestern province of Sichuan, lawyers and family members close to the case said yesterday.
Chen Tao was executed for "deliberately killing" a riot policeman during the demonstration in October 2004, when 100,000 farmers staged a sit-in against the building of the 186-metre-high Pubugou dam on the Dadu river in Hanyuan county.
The project was due to flood 100,000 people out of their homes and there were complaints that compensation was inadequate.
It was one of 74,000 "mass incidents" across the country that year, often-violent protests and riots over land-grabs, illegal pollution or corruption by local officials.
The scale of predominantly rural unrest prompted the Beijing government to introduce a number of measures aimed at reducing the wealth gap between rich and poor in China.
Mr Chen was one of four men jailed following the huge demonstration. Cai Dengming, whose son was Mr Chen's co-defendant, told the Reuters news agency that he had been executed.
"When I went to the Ya'an jail to visit my son this week, the officer there told me that Chen Tao had been executed," he said. His son Cai Zhao, was jailed for life in the same case.
Another villager, Gao Qiansong, was jailed for three years for his alleged role in leading the protests against the dam, which will be the country's fifth-largest hydropower plant, with a capacity of 3.3 million kilowatts, when it is completed in 2010.
Defence lawyer Ran Tong said he had only found out about the verdicts on Monday, when he received the sentence sheet containing the names and sentences of all the defendants.
"We were not able to defend our clients and I strongly oppose the court not respecting the spirit of law," he said.
The death sentence is carried out swiftly after conviction, generally with a bullet to the back of the head. China executes more people than any other country.
The scale of the demonstrations against the Pubugou dam took everyone by surprise.
Almost 10,000 People's armed police were sent to the dam site to stop the demonstrations and in the ensuing violence, one policeman was killed and a number of villagers and police injured.
The local authorities were unprepared for the extent of opposition among the local citizenry and questioned almost 400 villagers and farmers, and made at least a dozen arrests.
The massive protests also led to a purge of local city and county officials who had been accused of corruption and involvement in the clashes.
The former vice-mayor of Ya'an, Tang Fujin, was accused of accepting almost 2.5 million yuan (€250,000) in bribes.