Beijing – The killing of four children by their poverty-stricken mother – who then committed suicide, followed by her husband – sparked online outrage and debate in China Tuesday over the gap between rich and poor.

Yang Gailan, 28, used an axe to kill her three daughters, aged six, five and three, and her five-year-old son, police in the northwestern province of Gansu.

She committed suicide by drinking pesticide, they added in a statement online, and her husband poisoned himself two weeks later, after the funerals.

The family had been among the poorest in Agushan village, reports said, but were denied a government low-income allowance by the village committee, which claimed their annual per person income put them above the poverty line benchmark of 2,300 yuan (S$469) a year.

Multiple media reports alleged corruption was a factor, saying their benefits had been cancelled because they had not bribed local officials.

“Ours is a brutal, man-eating society,” said one poster on China’s Twitter-like Weibo Tuesday.

Poverty-stricken mother in China kills 4 children before committing suicide

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Sina Weibo

The situation “exactly reflects the painful reality of the extent of China’s poverty”, wrote Xiang Songzuo, chief economist for the Agricultural Bank of China, on his verified social media account.

“On the one hand are the corrupt officials embezzling hundreds of millions at every turn and the rich spending thousands every day, fighting to compare who can spend more, while on the other side are those in such poverty they lose the hope of living.”

China’s boom has seen it rise to become the world’s second-largest economy, but inequality remains stark and the Global Times newspaper, citing the National Bureau of Statistics, said 70 million people currently live below the poverty line, primarily in rural areas.

It quoted Dang Guoying, a rural development expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, saying: “This case shocked urban Chinese people living in developed eastern cities, because most of us cannot imagine that millions of Chinese people still live in poverty.”

JOHOR BARU – Several Malaysian families currently in Bangalore, India on vacation and business trips are stuck in their hotels after a curfew was imposed following riots in the city due to water disputes between two states there.

They were forced to stay indoors following a three-day curfew that began at 4.30pm on Monday.

Businessman S. Suresh, 35, who was on vacation with his family said that they were stuck in the hotel with armed guards stationed at the hotel lobby.

“We are stuck and now making arrangements to leave as soon as possible after we witnessed violent mobs and vehicles being burnt on Monday,” he said, adding that there were a lot of policemen on the streets.

Suresh said that a few other Malaysians were also stuck in the same hotel in Rajajinagar on Magudi Road.

He added that he had called the Malaysian consulate-general’s office in Chennai to ask for help but was told that they were closed for Hari Raya Haji.

“They do not even have a duty officer or a number for me to call a Malaysian embassy official for help.

“The man there who answered my call asked me to call back tomorrow,” he lamented.

Riots erupted over the past few days after an Indian Supreme Court ordered the release of the water to Tamil Nadu in Bangalore on Sept 12.

The curfew came after rampaging mobs set fire to dozens of buses, trucks and cars and attacked shops and businesses in Bangalore and some other parts of the state.

Karnataka is facing an acute shortage of water in its reservoirs and rivers as the state has only received sub-par rainfall in catchment areas, leading to protests by farmers and pro-government organisations refusing to share water with its neighbouring state.

HONG KONG – Chinese riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in a village once dubbed a symbol of grassroots democracy, residents and Hong Kong media said, less than a week after the elected village chief was jailed for corruption.

Pre-dawn police raids turned to violence after least 13 people were arrested in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong, residents said.

Human rights activists in Hong Kong, about a four-hour drive to the southwest, believe the crackdown could represent an unprecedented push to silence Wukan, whose villagers received international attention after an 2011 uprising led to authorities granting direct village-wide elections.

While low-level democratic experiments have been tried in villages across China, Wukan’s took place in the glare of both domestic and international publicity – and marked a rare moment when Communist Party officials backed down in the face of protest.

Villagers, including old people, pelted police with bricks as they advanced with shields, batons and helmets, with clouds of tear gas wafting down the street, video footage seen by Reuters showed.

The streets were strewn with bricks and used rubber bullet casements and tear gas canisters.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

One Wukan resident reached by Reuters by mobile phone said riot police hit people with batons, setting off tear gas grenades and firing rubber bullets at villagers, including old people.

He said police had entered the village in their “thousands”. Others said between 300 and 400 police were involved in the operation, including house-to-house searches. “The riot police started attacking and shooting at us,” he said. “They are still fighting now. We want them to leave.”

Calls for widespread democracy are anathema to party rulers, who have long feared such sentiment in Hong Kong leeching across the border into southern China. Weeks of “umbrella revolution”protests in the former British colony in late 2014 demanding fully free elections presented Beijing with one of its biggest political challenges in decades.

Tuesday’s crackdown also follows victories earlier this month by several pro-independence candidates in Hong Kong legislative elections – the first major polls since the 2014 protests.

Amnesty International’s Hong Kong-based China researcher, Patrick Poon, said this was the most serious crackdown Wukan had seen since 2011, when villagers ransacked the police station and government offices in protest against land grabs and corruption. “The government wants to use this crackdown to set an example and warn other neighbouring villages not to stage protests,” Poon said.

“They are using so much force, it is quite possible the villagers may not be able to say anything for a while.” The raids came days after a popular and democratically elected village chief, Lin Zuluan, one of the last of the 2011 protest leaders to remain in office, was jailed for three years on graft and other charges.

The sentence outraged many villagers and one said at the time fresh unrest was likely.

“POLICE LOCKDOWN”

Thousands also took to the streets in June to protest the arrest of Lin, who later appeared on television in what villagers believed was a forced confession. Democratic hopes had all but evaporated ahead of Tuesday’s violence, with protest leaders either in detention, in exile, facing arrest or quitting their posts.

Another person whose relatives are in Wukan told Reuters the village was now in police lockdown and that internet connection had been severed.

Photos on social media purporting to be from Wukan showed villagers with wounds that appeared to be from rubber bullets.

One video obtained by the Hong Kong government-funded RTHK shows a loud bang and a flash going off near dozens of policemen huddled in formation behind shields.

The official microblog of Lufeng county police, who oversee Wukan, stated in a post on Tuesday the 13 people arrested had been organising illegal assemblies and used threats to force villagers to join since June 19, a day after Lin was detained.

The police microblog said later its operation was supported by the public and order was being restored to Wukan.

It also issued a stern warning to people using social media who they said were spreading false rumours on “the so-called Wukan issue”, adding that cyber police were investigating.

Many microblog posts sharing photos of the faceoff in Wukan have since been deleted.

An official from the publicity department of the Shanwei City government, which oversees Wukan, said when asked about the violence: “I’m not very clear. Please ask another department.”

The crackdown has been extensively covered in Hong Kong media and some Hong Kong pro-democracy groups are planning protests outside Beijing’s official Liaison Office in the city.

BANGKOK – Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of Zika since January, the health ministry said on Tuesday, making it a country with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the region.

It was the first time Thailand’s health ministry has confirmed the number of Zika cases this year.

The announcement comes a day after health experts called on Thailand to be more transparent in reporting the Zika threat to the public after health officials played down risks from rising infections of the mosquito-borne virus.

Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand’s lucrative tourism industry. “Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week,” Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters. “The number of cases is stable,” he said, without giving further details.

Island city-state Singapore reported its first locally infected Zika patient on Aug. 27 and since then, the number of reported infections has soared to more than 300.

Malaysia and the Philippines have also reported cases.

What is the Zika virus?

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Reuters, The Straits Times, The New Paper, NEA

The virus, which is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been circulating in Asia for years.

The lineage of the virus circulating in Asia is different to the one in the Americas, researchers say. The level of population immunity to the lineage of Zika in Asia remains unknown, according to the World Health Organization.

Suwannachai urged the public not to panic and reiterated a message aimed at reassuring tourists. “People shouldn’t be scared to visit provinces affected by the Zika virus,” Suwannachai said.Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized – as well as other brain abnormalities.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly.

Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said.

In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders.

The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947.