‘Outlaws’ behind chemical plant demonstration
Print Edition
“A GROUP of outlaws” were the ringleaders of a rally against a planned petrochemical plant in southern China’s Maoming City, the municipal government said yesterday.
Hundreds of protesters against the paraxylene (PX) project marched through Maoming to the local government building on Sunday morning, Internet users said.
Photographs posted on social media showed cars overturned and burned that evening in the Guangdong Province city.
Maoming government said the demonstration was neither registered nor approved and was a serious, illegal act that had badly affected social order.
Protests began peacefully on some streets in the morning, said the authorities. In the afternoon, “a relatively small number of people” blocked traffic but the crowd later dispersed.
However, after 10:30pm, several troublemakers on motorcycles began throwing stones and water bottles, damaging public facilities, it said.
The trouble had been tackled swiftly by police, said the authorities, adding that no one was killed in the disturbances.
Protesters were demonstrating against a 3.5 billion yuan (US$562 million) plant program, to be jointly run by the local government and China’s oil giant Sinopec.
Paraxylene is a petrochemical used in manufacturing plastic bottles, polyester clothing and other products. However, opponents say it is linked to cancer.
The local government urged the public to study scientific information about paraxylene, rather than to believe rumors and “give criminals the opportunity to create chaos.”
“We welcome citizens from all walks of life to express their concerns in proper ways,” said the local government.
Concerns over paraxylene factories have prompted several environmental protests in recent years in China.
Two previous campaigns were successful in dissuading authorities from approving the petrochemical plants.
Plans for a paraxylene plant were shelved in Xiamen, in southeastern Fujian Province, in 2007, while a facility was ordered to close and relocate in Dalian in northeastern Liaoning Province in 2011, following public protests.
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