Monday, March 12, 2007

picture from the scene (ESWN has more)

Spike in bus rates triggers off massive riot

Up to 20,000 people have been on the street protesting last Friday in Yongzhou, Hunan province, the BBC reports, after the government raised prices for public transportation. Nine police cars were burned in the protest.
According to a Hunan official in a comment to Reuters, here used in an ITV-report:

that the riot had been quelled and that scores of the rioters were arrested. Both police and rioters were injured in the violence, and some of the rioters were sent to hospital, but none was seriously hurt, the official added.
Updated: More reports are coming in, like here from AP. Not surprisingly ESWN has the most thorough overview. The account from the Chinese media are most interesting, but are not always giving the same information. Also, many pictures here. Some accounts say there has been one death and 60 injured.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It doesn't seem to be the government that raised the prices for the tickets, but the private company that owns a monopoly to exploit that line

China Herald said...

The protest seemed to have been initially indeed against the bus company, but like in almost every country the government has an important say in those prices and is anyway the one who has allowed this monopoly to emerge