Thousands of people in Wukan in southern Guangdong province defied a police warning and staged a protest march yesterday...demanding that authorities ­release their village chief and ­return occupied land…[M]ore than 2,000 residents...gathered..amid a heavy presence of riot police…Authorities had attempted to halt the ­assembly by detaining Wukan’s party secretary, Lin Zuluan, at midnight on Saturday.

…[I]n September 2011…residents staged a series of protests over land seizures. The Guangdong provincial government eventually relented and, in an attempt to end the protests over their land, granted the villagers a grass-roots election to select their own leaders. But almost five years later, ­villagers complain that the land disputes have not been resolved and, if anything, are worse.

“No one organised this assembly, everyone came on their own. It’s no fun to stand in the sun like this if not for supporting Lin,” a 25-year-old villager who refused to be named said. Officials attempted to dissuade villagers from marching earlier yesterday. Zhang Shuijin, a Wukan village deputy secretary, told reporters that the Lufeng city government had recently set up a working group of about a dozen members to study Wukan’s land disputes. They also expressed fears over Lin’s safety in police custody, and remembered how their protest leader Xue Jinbo died mysteriously after being detained in 2011.