Wednesday's clash in Anxian county — one of the hardest-hit areas from last May's quake — left an unspecified number of farmers and police injured and calm was restored after 100 police were brought in, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Friday.
Xinhua reported that tensions flared after five villagers said they were denied subsidies and beat the head of Yongquan village. After some of the farmers were detained for the beating, 20 more villagers then surrounded the local police station.
An official in Anxian county's propaganda office played down the conflict but confirmed that a dispute occurred over relief subsidies. The official said farmers were dredging sand from a river bed for construction and when local officials tried to stop them, they raised the issue of quake subsidies.
"Police from neighboring areas gathered to maintain the order, (but) no clash broke out in the township," said the official, who would only give his surname, Xi.
The misuse of relief supplies and funds has been a constant problem since only a few days after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake jolted Sichuan province and surrounding areas on May 12, leaving 90,000 people dead or missing and 5 million homeless. Victims complained that local officials were giving tents and relief supplies to relatives and friends, rather than to people most in need.
The authoritarian government in Beijing has allocated 70 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) for reconstruction and has vowed to monitor carefully how funds are spent to prevent corruption. Disaster relief funds have been a favorite target of local officials. In 2007, some 258 million yuan in disaster relief funds were diverted to construct government buildings or spent on administration, according to a government audit.
In the Anxian county dispute, Xinhua said the local government is investigating whether subsidies were misallocated.