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Rails seizure shakes a nation's conscience
(皇冠体育appdaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-10-25 16:19 Police has detained eight villagers who seized
state-owned rail tracks and other facilities for their own use in Yongdeng
County, a less-developed area of Northwest 皇冠体育app鈥檚 Gansu Province on Sunday.
More than 100
farmers and their children dismantle and grab a 600-metre-long outdated
segment of the iron rails in Yongdeng County, in Northwest 皇冠体育app鈥檚 Gansu
Province on October 23, 2005.
[sina] |
The Lanzhou Morning Post reported
Monday that more than 100 farmers and their children began to dismantle and grab
a 600-metre-long outdated segment of the iron rails Sunday morning, which the
rail authorities no longer used.
A total of six appalling graphics, showing the mass seizure scene, have
been shown on the popular sina.com and sohu.com portal Web pages, triggering a
wild public response, and a heated discussion.
Interestingly, the majority of the online readers side with the farmers,
simply because they might be poor, left far behind the urban noveau rich.
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Railway worker sits
beside the rail and three farmers dismantle the iron rails not far
away. [sina]
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One reader sympathizing
with the farmers said the villagers 鈥渁s a matter of fact鈥� went to recycle the
rail scrap, 鈥渃hanging wastes into valuables.鈥�
Many questioned the ever-growing wealth gap between the haves and have-nots.
However, some criticized the looting residents as not being law-abiding.
The seizure happened at the Da Lu rail station, in Yondeng鈥檚 Kushui Town.
Hearing the news the 600-metre old trails were to be abandoned, local villagers
flocked to the station with pickaxes and ripping bars. Some were witnessed
bagging the iron material home.
Scrap iron and steel can be sold at a discount price.
The newspaper also reported the railway workers at the station did not try to
stop the farmers from looting. One picture showed a rail worker sitting at the
scene, motionless.
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