Riot breaks out after assault on blind buskers

ANGRY passers-by who saw a group of security guards assaulting and chasing away some blind buskers reacted by burning police vehicles and a fire engine in Foshan, Guang-dong, China Press reported.

In the 7pm incident on Friday, the buskers were performing in a public place at Xinghao Bay when the officers moved in to chase them away.

An argument ensued and the officers were said to have attacked the disabled street performers and smashed their instruments.

Passers-by stopped to voice their outrage and demanded that the officers apologise to the victims.

The noisy argument drew more than a thousand people backing the buskers, causing traffic in the area to come to a standstill.

The authorities rushed more than 100 riot police to quell the riot, which ended at about 11.40pm.

> IN another report, three people with hearing and speech impairments forced more than 20 other people of similar disabilities to beg for alms in the streets of Beijing.

Police nabbed nine beggars after a territorial conflict in September last year, which led to the arrest of the alleged mastermind and his two accomplices, Kwong Wah Yit Poh reported.

The alleged leader, identified as Wang Zhigang, confessed that he and his accomplices collected between 1,000 yuan (RM500) and 2,000 yuan (RM1,000) a day and gave the beggars a daily allowance of only 20 yuan (RM10) to 30 yuan (RM15).

> AN Indonesian man was declared brain dead after undergoing a facelift surgery at a clinic in Singapore, major Chinese dailies reported.

The papers quoted sources as saying that the man had gone to the clinic in Orchard Road for the plastic surgery on Thursday when complications arose. The man was then quickly transferred to Gleneagles Hospital.

The Singapore Medical Council said the “surgeon” was just a general practitioner, refuting claims by the doctor on the clinic’s website that he was clinically trained and had vast experience in cosmetic surgery.

Found in translation is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.