Quotes of the Day

Lin Yudui came home from Shanghai to his native Guangdong province earlier this month to get married. Instead, the parents of the 26-year-old air-conditioner salesman are now preparing for his funeral. Last Tuesday afternoon, Lin joined what locals estimate was a 1,000-strong protest in southern China's Dongzhou village, where three people had been detained while demanding compensation for land that residents say had been seized by local officials to build a power plant. Hundreds of riot police and soldiers, plus several tanks, were called in to disperse the protesters with tear gas—not that unusual in a country where standoffs over everything from environmental degradation to land seizures are increasing every year. In 2004, China was rocked by 74,000 "mass incidents," according to Beijing's own estimate. "Villagers are emboldened when they hear of other protests," says Joseph Cheng, a political-science professor at the City University of Hong Kong. "There is a knock-on effect that local officials cannot stop."

What happened next in Dongzhou, though, was far from ordinary. Just after 7 p.m., say two locals reached by TIME by phone, riot police opened fire on the villagers, who responded by throwing homemade explosives. By the time the smoke had cleared, Lin and at least five others were dead, according to the two eyewitnesses. "We never imagined that they would shoot people," says a Dongzhou housewife surnamed Huang, whose father was injured in the fight. On Saturday, a government report said three villagers had died, adding that the police were forced to shoot in self-defense. But three locals say that besides the six dead now being kept in Dongzhou, several other bodies were dragged away by police and have not been seen since.

Meanwhile, Lin's family is keeping his bullet-scarred body on ice at home as evidence of police malfeasance. "We are afraid they will come and take the body and say that nothing happened," says Lin's girlfriend, who noted on Saturday that the village was still surrounded by security forces and that most residents were too scared to leave their homes. "Why are they treating us like enemies when all we want is justice?"

• Hannah Beech
• Police open fire on protesters in a southern Chinese village