Thousands Riot in Rural Chinese Town Over SARS
Thousands of residents of this rural town, believing that a local school would be turned into a ward for urban SARS patients, ransacked the interior of the four-story building on Sunday night. The school attack is the first reported instance of civic violence directly associated with China's epidemic of SARS or severe acute respiratory syndrome. It suggests that social tensions are rising as fear of the invisible, potentially fatal virus spreads faster than the disease itself, although nearly a hundred more cases were reported in Beijing today.
Is this another Tiananmen in the making ?