China villagers protest corruption

Several villagers were on hunger strike on Wednesday

Villagers in southern China have vowed to continue their protest against alleged local corruption following their arrest for a hunger strike.

More than 80 people in Taishi village, Guangdong province, refused food on Wednesday because they said the local authorities had ignored their concerns.

Seventeen of them were arrested on Thursday morning but were later released without charge.

It is the latest in a series of such disputes in rural China.

On 29 July, villagers submitted a petition to remove the village chief in Taishi, whom they accused of embezzlement, according to Guo Feixiong, a lawyer for the villagers.

He said that seven villagers were then arrested on 16 August, and two weeks later the locals' petition was rejected.

"They were very dissatisfied," Mr Guo told the BBC News website.

During their hunger strike, they were calling for "democracy, justice and legal rights, and they asked the local government to approve their petition", Mr Guo said.

One of the protesters who was arrested on 16 August and then released on Thursday told the BBC that the villagers would continue their fight.

"We will continue the petitioning and ask the local government to remove the village chief through recall procedures," said Feng Weinan, referring to the process of removing unsatisfactory local leaders which was introduced in the late 1980s to give Chinese citizens a greater role in local affairs.

Protests by villagers over issues such as land seizures, corruption and pollution are becoming more common in China.

A few are successful. For example, in July, farmers in the eastern province of Zhejiang forced a pharmaceutical factory to close after they stormed it, complaining that it had polluted a local river.

But many such protests do not succeed. Mr Guo believes the protest in Taishi has so far failed because the amount of money the village chief is alleged to have embezzled is so high that other local officials may also have been involved.