'Hong Kong activist' arrested over village incinerator protest
Police take hard line against trio accused of organising demonstration in Huizhou
Guangdong police have arrested three activists, one of them a Hong Kong resident, for organising protests over a planned incinerator in Huizhou.
The Huiyang district police bureau said in an online statement yesterday that the three detainees were suspected of "disrupting social order by attempting to mobilise several thousand villagers to demonstrate in front of local government buildings".
A Beijing-based environmentalist who has studied mainland incinerator projects, and who wished to remain anonymous, said that Pan Yu, a Hong Kong resident, was arrested on August 30 during a trip to Shenzhen.
"Villagers and other property owners, mostly from Shenzhen, oppose the incinerator so they soon joined the protests against the project," the environmentalist said. "But police accused Pan and two others of leading local villagers in the protests."
Pan and the two other suspects own property near the planned incinerator location.
A spokesman for Hong Kong's Immigration Department said last night it had not received any request for assistance.
The arrests are the latest in a series of detentions as mainland authorities take a harder line on protests against construction seen by local residents as undesirable for their neighbourhoods.