Authorities in the Sichuan city of Shifang said yesterday they would scrap plans to build a heavy-metal processing plant after violent clashes between tens of thousands of anti-pollution protesters and riot police escalated for a third day.
Late last night, thousands of residents gathered again outside the city government headquarters demanding the release of an unspecified number of people detained during the three-day demonstration, mostly students, according to witnesses' accounts and photos posted last night on Sina Weibo.
They chanted slogans such as 'release the kids'. Anti-riot police tried to disperse the crowds.
In a dramatic turn of events, Shifang officials made a rare compromise amid mounting public pressure, vowing the molybdenum-copper alloy plant would be scrapped.
'Given the fact that some people are worried about the environmental impact and health hazards of the project and reacted fiercely, [we] have decided to stop construction on the plant and it will never be built in Shifang,' the city's Communist Party chief, Li Chengjin, said in a statement yesterday.
Witnesses in Shifang, which was devastated by the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, said more protesters showed up near the city centre yesterday than on the two previous days of demonstrations. People were defying a heavy security presence and an unusually harsh warning issued by the city government earlier in the day that protesters would be 'severely punished' if they sought to continue the 'illegal' protests. There were many reports of violence against peaceful demonstrators, including teenage students, with photos posted online showing bloodied protesters and police wielding batons and firing tear gas.
'Thousands of people took to the streets today, even more than yesterday, simply because we don't believe what the government has promised,' said a woman who works at a teahouse close to the city administration's headquarters.