False rape posting led to brawl

GUANGZHOU: A false rumor about a rape sparked the brawl that killed two people and left more than 100 injured at a toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, police announced yesterday.

A disgruntled former factory worker has been detained by police after he allegedly wrote on a website two weeks ago that "six Xinjiang boys had raped two innocent girls at the Xuri Toy Factory", a Shaoguan publicity official surnamed Xiao said.

The rumor was first posted on www.sg169.com, a major website in Shaoguan, and then republished on many other websites, triggering Friday's brawl.

Police said no rape cases have been reported since May in the district where the factory is located.

The suspect had quit working at the factory, then wished to be rehired, but the company refused.

It's believed he faked the information to express his discontent with the factory.

Police would not release the man's full name, but gave his family name as Zhu.

The fight involving hundreds of people began around 2 am Friday at the factory. Two died and 118 were injured.

About 400 police had to be deployed to evacuate people on the site.

The violence lasted until early morning Friday.

About 600 Uygur workers were sent from the factory to temporary accommodations after the incident.

About half the injured people have left the hospital, and the remaining 60 with more serious wounds are still receiving treatment in Shaoguan Yuebei People's Hospital. Two of them are in critical condition, Xiao said.

The Xuri factory belongs to Early Light International (Holdings), owned by a Hong Kong tycoon. The factory has more than 10,000 employees.

Plant officials hired 800 migrant workers last month through labor authorities in Shufu county, which is under the jurisdiction of Kashgar in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, according to a press release issued by the municipal government of Shaoguan. The hirings were in response to the central government's policy of encouraging firms to hire minorities from the western region to help reduce the income gap between that area and other parts of China.

"We should not allow an occasional case to affect the co-operation of economy between the east and the west," the party chief of Guangdong Wang Yang was quoted as saying when he visited the injured people in Shaoguan over the weekend.