Chinese villagers riot over SARS
From correspondents in Beijing
April 29, 2003
UP to 2000 villagers torched a school earmarked as a SARS quarantine centre, ransacked government offices and overturned cars in China's first reported instance of social unrest related to SARS.
The mayhem in Chagugang town, a rural area not far from the heavily populated port city of Tianjin, happened on Sunday night after the Tianjin government decided to convert a school into a SARS isolation facility.
"The plan was to transform the high school into an isolation centre," a Chagugang government official, who did not want to be named, said.
"When nearby villagers heard this they feared they would be caught by the disease.
"The head of the villages explained to the people but they wouldn't listen."
More:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...5E1702,00.html