Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on brazen land grabs and forced demolitions after a nine-month-old regulation intended to curb unlawful evictions has proved to be largely toothless.
A total of 57 local government officials have been penalised, Xinhua reported yesterday, citing a joint government statement. Of those, 31 are under criminal investigation for their alleged involvement in 11 cases of forced evictions in the first six months of the year that led to violent clashes and deaths.
Six of the 11 cases were deemed unlawful.
The other five were considered legal but badly executed by local governments, according to a joint investigation by four central government agencies: the State Council, the Ministry of Supervision, the Ministry of Land and Resources, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
The statement came after large-scale protests against land-grabs in southern China's economic powerhouse, Guangdong province, had simmered for four days and turned violent at times.
Lufeng, a city of 1.7 million people, saw violent clashes with authorities last week, when villagers in the village of Wukan ransacked a government office and police station, claiming that officials had colluded with developers to steal hundreds of hectares of farmland and use it for development.
The statement highlighted one case in March in which a 48-year-old woman died after being buried in rubble in a forced demolition imposed by the district government in Changchun , the capital city of northeastern Jilin province. The Ministry of Supervision forced the mayor to apologise publicly.