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Minnie Chan

Nearly 1,000 people from two feuding villages in Danzhou, Hainan province, clashed over the use of a graveyard during  the Ching Ming festival, villagers and media said yesterday.
The riot is the third mass incident of unrest to strike Hainan in the past two weeks. 
The Hainan Daily reported that more than 100 police officers were sent to Sandu township to mediate in a brawl between residents of  Yan village and Baishaxue village on Saturday. Several villagers were injured in the brawl and sent to hospital.
The report said the officers took four hours to quell the riot through peaceful measures, including linking arms to form a barrier to separate the  villagers. There were no arrests.
The report did not say how many villagers took part in the dispute, but a witness said he saw about 1,000 people armed with sticks and rocks taking part.  
'They were fighting each other over a land dispute because the tombs of the  Baishaxue villagers' ancestors are in Yan Village,' the witness  said. 'In fact, the villagers from Yan and Baishaxue are all surnamed Yang. They have the same ancestry.' 
He said one household of the Yang family  moved out of Yan village to found Baishaxue village about 100 years ago, after coming into some money. The tombs of their forefathers remained in Yan village, he said.
The Hainan Daily report said Yan village residents complained that the Baishaxue villagers expanded the graveyard each year to take up more of the Yan village land, though the latter group denied the claims.
Witnesses said the residents of Yan village were provoked when hundreds of Baishaxue villagers descended for a massive tomb-sweeping event on Ching Ming on Saturday morning.
The report said the township government originally sent 15 police officers and officials to intervene,  but had to seek help from the Danzhou municipal public security bureau when those efforts failed.
It said township officials were still stationed at the two villages yesterday to persuade villagers to reach a compromise over the graveyard  disputes.
Yuan Weishi, a professor of philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, said such  serious disputes over minor issues had become common in the mainland's rural areas.
'Disputes in rural areas are normally triggered by two things, land disputes and traditional customs, because our country has transited into a modern nation after economic reform,' Professor Yuan said.



1,000 villagers in Danzhou city clash over use of graveyard