Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – An explosion in a Chinese coal mine killed 14 people and injured 3, the government said on Monday, in the latest accident to strike the country's disaster-plagued industry. The accident occurred in Xingwen County in the south-western province of Sichuan at 1:40 am on Sunday (1740 GMT Saturday), the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The cause of the explosion wasn't reported, but accidents are often blamed on a lack of required equipment or on indifference to safety rules. Flooding, fires and other accidents are reported almost daily in China's coal mines, which are the world's most dangerous. At least 5,286 coal mine deaths have been reported so far this year. Last month, a blast in a mine in central China killed 166 miners in the nation's deadliest mining accident in years.
Meanwhile, police in Fujian province have detained a farmers' rights campaigner, a US-based rights body said yesterday, following the brief detention of three outspoken intellectuals last week.
Li Baiguang, a 37-year-old legal academic and freelance writer, was detained last Tuesday, said the New York-based China Labour Watch. It did not say under what charges he had been held.
His detention came just a day after three top intellectuals were detained in Beijing on Monday.
Yu Jie, Liu Xiaobo and Zhang Zuhua were released on Tuesday after being warned to stop writing articles critical of the Communist Party.
Mr Yu, who is a friend of the farmers' rights advocate, said he had not heard about Mr Li's alleged detention, but said the activist had told him he was travelling to Fujian when they met last week.
"I don't know whether it was related [to my detention]. It could be that he offended some officials when he was fighting for farmers' rights," Mr Yu said.
Mr Li wrote on the website Epoch Times in October that police told farmers to report on his whereabouts and had threatened to arrest him if he continued to provide them with legal advice.
Police could not be reached for comment yesterday. Another farmers' rights advocate, Zhao Yan , also a researcher for The New York Times, has been detained since September.
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