Chinese Villagers Riot Against SARS Quarantine
Mon May 5, 2003 09:26 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - About 1,000 villagers in eastern China surrounded a local government office on Monday in a violent protest against the quarantine of suspected SARS patients near their homes, a police official said.
The villagers in the town of Xiandie in coastal Zhejiang province smashed and overturned police and government cars, and demanded that the patients, quarantined in the poorly equipped office building, be moved away.
"They are furious because they don't want the sick people so close to their homes," said an official at the Xiandie police station who gave her surname as Zhuang. The rioting had halted but the villagers remained at the compound gate and police from the area had been dispatched to disperse the crowd, she said. The riot in Zhejiang followed another large scale protest sparked by fear over the deadly disease in Chagugang, a township 45 miles southeast of Beijing. Villagers there rioted over a plan to use an abandoned school to quarantine SARS patients.
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