A Chinese google document has been set up to collect most updated information about the Shishou riot. Here is a translated summary of the blog posts via the google doc.

Background (by Subei via google doc)

On June 17th around 7:30, Xu Yuangao's body was found outside Yong Lung hotel at Shishou city in Wubei province. Xu, 24-year-old, was the hotel's chef. The police investigated the scene and said that Xu committed suicide. However, Xu's family believed that he was murdered because there were no blood stain on the ground, but there were some obvious injuries in his body. Moreover, similar incident happened before two years ago. Rumor said that local police and government officials had their share in the hotel.

On the next day, the hotel told Xu's family that if they could agree that Xu committed suicide, they could get 35 thousand yuan compensation. However, Xu's family insisted to find out the truth and refused to incinerate the body. Xu's father brought with him a gas container to the hotel to protect the body from taking away.

[photo: father protecting the son's body]

On 1:00am, June 19, police and funeral cars arrived at the hotel and wanted to take away the body. 2,000 Shishou residents blocked the hotel entrance to protect Xu's dead body. The first confrontation between local residents and the police happened at around 8a.m, some residents were arrested but more joined in. At 1:00pm, a few thousand local residents fought back with stones and bottles and the police line had broken down. At 3:00pm, the police failed again in seizing the dead body and the city government had to seek help from armed police. Eventually, Jingzhou had sent a clan of armed police to back up. However, the number of local residents had reached more than 40 thousands at its peak time and the armed police had to retreat.

At night, there were still more than 10 thousand residents blocked the hotel entrance and main roads leading to the hotel. At 2:00am, June 20, 500 police took action again and there was another confrontation. Tens of local residents and polices were injured.

The city government started to cut Internet connection on June 20th early morning. Another round of confrontation happened around 7:00am. This time the police was equipped with 8 anti-riot vehicles and six fire engines. Thousands of local residents fought back with stone and bricks. Below are some video showing the confrontation scene:

The most updated news from twitter via freemoren at around 10am June 21, said that the police had finally seized the dead body and transported it to the crematorium. Torrent from twitter has set up a twitter account @shishou for translating update in English.

While overseas media, such as Reuters and AFP, the Chinese news.cn has a news story describing the confrontation and riot as an inter-departmental fire drill.

Below are some comments from twitter (via twitter search - shishao):

After tens of thousands cops robbed people in #Shishou of a corpse, welcome to China ruled by Zombies.

Please help to spread the riot news in Shishou. Their lives are in danger, Chinese people needs your help! #ShishouRiot #Shishou

FUCK! Shishou riots reported in Chinese media as “bus fire extinguishing exercises”. How low can those in power go?

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