The mayor and 12 bureau chiefs of Lianjiang, Guangdong Province will be taken to court by more than 800 farmers for allegedly seizing their farmland, Southern Rural News reported on Thursday.

The farmers claim that about 47,000 sq m of farmland was illegally acquired as the government auctioned off the rights for sand excavation in Lianjiang's rivers.

Hengdong village chief Chen Guang displayed several documents and legal certificates to show the land belongs to the village.

"They (the officials) violated our rights. We will surely sue them," said Chen, according to the report.

"So many government departments participated in the project but they made such a careless decision without investigating ahead of time," he added.

All the officials represented the local government as it issued its tenders for the sand excavations last March.

The government of Lianjiang stood to gain more than 23 million yuan (US$3.4 million) from the transfer of excavation rights at 82 locations.

Chen and several other village officials began appealing to provincial authorities over the farmland seizure last June.

Opposition from the farmers could not stop work beginning in the sand pits.

The farmers then lodged a suit in April, asking the government to stop violating the farmland and pay compensation to the farmers.

But officials shrugged off the farmers' accusations.

"The land inside the river bank belongs to the country. The government did not violate their rights," said Lin Jiayong, an official with Lianjiang Water Resource Bureau. "The scope of the sand pits was set upon the negotiation among several departments, including the water and land bureaus."

The Intermediate People's Court of Zhanjiang could not be reached for comment yesterday.

(China Daily August 7, 2009)