ree press advocates in China are sounding the alarms after a Chinese man was beaten to death by officials after trying to film a confrontation between city officials and residents of Wanba village in Tianmen over the dumping of waste near their village.

According to the report, 24 municipal inspectors have been detained so far for their involvement in the incident, in which 41-year-old construction company executive Wei Wenhua was beaten to death for trying to record a scuffle between city officials and village residents on his cell phone. The villagers were attempting to stop trucks from unloading waste near their homes when the fight broke out.

Some 50 municipal inspectors are alleged to have attacked Wenhua after he began to record the incident with his cell phone, with Wei pronounced dead on arrival at Tianmen hospital shortly after the beating.

The incident has sparked outrage among Chinese civil liberties groups and activists around the world, with Reporters Without Borders calling Wei "the first 'citizen journalist' to die in China because of what he was trying to film."

"He was beaten to death for doing something which is becoming more and more common and which was a way to expose law-enforcement officers who keep on overstepping their limits," the advocacy group said in a statement on Friday.