Thousands of students at a university in central China continued to stare down police yesterday as they maintained a boycott of classes over their treatment by school management.
Students have been on strike since between 5,000 and 10,000 of them began ransacking the campus last Thursday night, with hundreds of police brought in to quell the unrest, according to witnesses and participants.
Photographs of the unrest posted on the Internet showed an on-campus bank branch, dormitories and cars had been vandalized, and bicycles were strewn across the university.
The students say they were originally promised diplomas from Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, but were later told they would only be given diplomas from a less prestigious affiliate, the Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College.
The violent scenes lasted into the weekend, with several thousand students continuing to demonstrate peacefully around the campus administration building yesterday, according to one of the participants, surnamed Xu.
"The stance of the school remains tough but if the institute does not resolve this issue, we will continue to boycott classes and examinations," Xu said, adding that some students and journalists had been beaten.
Xu said police in anti-riot gear had refused to allow the students to leave the Shengda campus.
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