CHINA:It is a chilling tale of would-be copycat killers - five coal miners in the central province of Henan have been arrested for conspiring unsuccessfully to kill fellow workers with cyanide and extorting money from pit owners - re-enacting exactly the plot of one of China's best, and grimmest, films of recent years.
Blind Shaft, which is adapted from Liu Qingbang's novel Shen Mu (Sacred Wood), tells the story of a pair of miners in northern Shaanxi province who pretend to be family members of mine workers they killed underground to get compensation from corrupt mine owners, who are keen to pay them off quickly to avoid attention.
China's coal industry is the deadliest in the world, claiming 4,700 lives last year, with many of the victims dying in illegal unregulated mines dotted around the country. Mining authorities have been battling to wipe out corruption in the industry, which remains rife because of intermittent enforcement and massive demand for coal.
In the film, the miners set upon their colleagues underground, then stage cave-ins and claim their victims perished during the underground accidents.
It is a harsh commentary on greed and amorality in contemporary China, and it is enormously ironic that Blind Shaft or Sacred Mountain should be the inspiration for copycat actions. The film won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2003 and acclaim in the West, though it was banned in China, and if the killers took the idea from anywhere, it is more likely to have come from Liu Qingbang's book. The movie is widely available on pirate DVD.
In the real-life case, the suspects duped fellow miners into taking capsules containing cyanide, telling them they would fall unconscious but "wake up" after 10 hours, according to a report in the Beijing News.
The miners promised their victims that they would be given a cut of the compensation paid out by mine owners, who would be led to believe that they had died during accidents underground.
There are regular reports of scams involving miners seeking hush money in China. In September, a miner in Hubei province died shortly after fellow workers pulled him out of a shaft at a local mine, shaking and frothing at the mouth. Soon afterwards a group claiming to include family members arrived to demand compensation.
Police linked the case to two separate incidents this year in which two people were killed for compensation claims, the Beijing News said.
Reports of deaths and injuries in the mining industry are an almost daily occurrence. The death toll from China's latest major coal mine disaster rose to 105 yesterday, as hopes for survivors ebbed in a tragedy compounded by bungled rescue efforts.
Twenty-six more bodies were recovered yesterday morning following a gas explosion at the mine in northern China's Shanxi province. At least 120 workers were in the Ruizhiyuan mine at the time of the accident on Wednesday night although the exact number is not known, the Xinhua news agency reported.
As one unscrupulous mine owner comments in Blind Shaft: "There's a shortage of everything except people in China."