Cotton farmers clash with police
Cotton farmers in China’s far west clashed with police and paramilitary guards over alleged price fixing by local authorities, leaving 40 people injured, witnesses and a Hong Kong news report said.
The riot broke out Sept. 22 in Ili, an area in the northwestern corner of the Xinjiang region, after police raided farmhouses looking for caches of hidden cotton, farmer Zhang Xiaolan said.
Farmers were hiding the cotton to sell on the open market because they believed the local authority’s fixed price for the crop was too low, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper said.
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