HONG KONG — Protesters in a Chinese fishing village that earned renown for its activism have taken to the streets in recent days to call for the release of a detained local leader and the resolution of a long-simmering dispute over land sales, residents said on Monday.
The village of Wukan, in the southeastern province of Guangdong, became the focus of attention both in China and abroad in 2011, as villagers angered over the sale of land temporarily forced out the local authorities.
Eventually, the villagers and the authorities reached a compromise, and the residents voted in leaders they hoped would resolve the dispute.
But protests on Sunday and Monday were the latest indication that the hope of the villagers to achieve their goals at the ballot box has been far from realized and that the so-called Wukan model of resolving local disputes in China has not worked in Wukan itself.
The impetus for the protests was the detention of Lin Zuluan, Wukan’s Communist Party secretary. Mr. Lin, in his early 70s, was a leader of the demonstrations in 2011 and was elected local party secretary in 2012 after the provincial authorities allowed a vote for the post.
Despite China’s authoritarian government, controlled by the Communist Party, elections have been allowed since the late 1970s for some village-level leadership positions that have limited, local powers. But direct voting is not used for more important positions.
The Public Security Bureau for Lufeng, the city that oversees Wukan, said in a written statement on Saturday that Mr. Lin was being held on suspicion of abuse of power and accepting bribes. But some villagers believed he was being held because of his plans to call a meeting about the unresolved land dispute and to petition the higher authorities to help resolve the matter, said Hong Ruiqing, a resident.
The Lufeng police warned residents against extreme protests.
“We call on all villagers to actively support and cooperate with the work of the legal authorities and defend hard-won social stability,” the statement by the Public Security Bureau said. “Don’t be incited by a small number of lawbreakers to use drastic measures.”
Ms. Hong said that she did not participate in the protest on Sunday but that 2,000 to 3,000 people marched to a police station in the afternoon. Another resident, who asked not to be identified, put the total at 3,000 to 4,000.
The demonstrators carried Chinese flags and chanted, “Return our secretary.” Images posted online showed large numbers of riot police officers, but the demonstration concluded peacefully, the witnesses said.
On Monday, the number of riot police officers in the village appeared to have diminished, the witnesses said. But there was a demonstration again on Monday evening.
Messages on Chinese social media that mention Wukan have been censored in recent days, according to Weiboscope, a monitoring service run by the journalism school at the University of Hong Kong.
The mainland Chinese news media has scarcely mentioned the situation, but Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party, argued that the village’s experience showed that democracy was insufficient for solving property disputes.
“If the drastic actions of the Wukan villagers are adopted by other people involved in disputes, China will see mess and disturbance at a grass-roots level,” the newspaper said in a commentary on Monday.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/world/asia/china-wukan-protest.html?ref=asia
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