Beijing, Dec 31 (DPA) Police in south-western China’s Sichuan province have arrested nine suspects accused of murdering at least nine people with learning difficulties and then claiming compensation from mine owners, state media said Thursday.
The victims were taken from Sichuan’s Leibo county to mines across China, where they were allegedly murdered underground by men who posed as their relatives to claim compensation from mine owners, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Leibo county police chief Ye Jianhua said the murders occurred in nine provinces but he did not give the total number of victims, the agency said.
Ye said three suspects were accused of beating to death a mentally disabled man at an iron mine in the south-eastern province of Fujian in April.
Police in the other provinces were still investigating the murders, he said.
In a separate case after the arrests, another mentally disabled man from Leibo died at a coal mine in the central province of Hubei Nov 23, two days after he started work with the Chengui Mining Group in Daye city, the agency said.
The Chengui company offered compensation of 200,000 yuan ($29,000) to three men who claimed to be the dead man’s relatives.
But the claimants fled when the company decided to check their identities and that of the dead man, who used the name Huang Suoge.
“More surprisingly, we got the news from Leibo County that the real Huang Suoge committed suicide three years ago,” the agency quoted Li Yunbao, chairman of the company, as saying.
State media have reported similar murders at mines for at least a decade.
Director Li Yang’s film “Blind Shaft”, which won a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival in 2003, featured two men who travelled around coal mines trying to claim compensation after killing strangers.
Genuine accidents kill thousands of people annually in Chinese mines, most of them at coal mines. The accidents are often triggered by outdated equipment and poor safety measures, especially at illegal mines.
