China: where stopping hijackers gets you paid
As a Chinese airplane of the Hainan Airlines, parent company of the airline on which the hijacking occurred, waits for the take-off on February 3, 2012.
The Chinese airline staff who apparently beat to death two suspected hijackers in China's Xinjiang province have been handsomely rewarded for their efforts, according to China's Xinhua news wire.
Staff who overwhelmed the 6 Uighur thought to be hijacking the plane (with a metal crutch) were rewarded by local government and Hainan Airlines (HNA), the parent company of the airline on which the incident occurred, in a ceremony on Monday.
From Xinhua:
HNA awarded two security guards and the plane's chief attendant 1 million yuan (159,000 U.S. dollars) each in cash, an apartment worth 3 million yuan and a sedan.The rest of the crew each received 500,000 yuan, a 2-million-yuan apartment and asedan.
This money comes in addition to other rewards already given out by local government. In total, some of the crew seem to have received rewards of over a million dollars, if reports are to be believed. The 22 passengers involved will get free lifetime passes from the airline.
However, the case is still controversial. The hijackers were reportedly part of a separatist Uighur movement, but Uighur leaders have argued that they were simply attacked after a dispute over seats with majority ethnic Han Chinese passengers.
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