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Yahoo! News   Sun, May 11, 2003
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India - Reuters
China detains nine for leading violent SARS riots
Sun May 11,12:23 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Police in northern China have detained at least nine people for taking part in violent protests against plans to build a SARS (news - web sites) clinic in their neighbourhood, the official Xinhua news agency said.

 

They were suspected of assaulting police, destroying property or looting during a series of riots in the northern coastal city of Tianjin, Xinhua reported late on Saturday.

Tianjin, with seven deaths and 149 cases of the flu-like disease, is the latest city in China where residents have overturned cars, raided hospitals or blocked roads to prevent the building of SARS clinics or stop the return of migrant workers.

The World Health Organisation has advised against travel to the industrial city, located about one hour's drive from Beijing, the city with the world's highest number of SARS cases.

Xinhua said three suspects incited more than 300 residents to gather at a medical unit construction site in the Hongqiao district in early May. They used telephone poles and bricks to block the road leading to the clinic.

They also forced the driver of a truck piled with building materials to dump his load, causing a severe traffic jam, it said.

Dozens of protests have broken out across China in the past two weeks in cities and villages where people fear the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Disease to their neighbourhoods.

At least 235 people have died from SARS in China and more than 4,800 have been infected. Health services in much of China's vast countryside are ill-equipped to treat the virus, much less handle a major outbreak.

China's new leaders headed by President Hu Jintao worry that SARS-related protests, especially in China's rural areas, will erode its jealously guarded bedrock of social stability and pose a serious political challenge to the new administration.

The State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) said in an urgent notice on Saturday that irregular price rises on anti-SARS drugs and related goods had spilled over to rural areas.

In some villages, the prices of medical products have risen sharply, and officials have charged farmers excessive fees in the name of quarantine or health inspections, Xinhua quoted the commission as saying.


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