The Haifeng County People's Court in South China's Guangdong Province is expected to soon start looking into compensation claims over the deaths of vagrants who were incinerated during a minivan fire.

"We expect to hold a hearing soon," said the vice-director of the court's Case Registration Division.

The tragedy occurred on April 9, 2001, when 25 vigrants were being transported to a collection centre.

All died in the torched minivan but only relatives of nine victims are asking for compensation, reported Nanfang Metropolitan Daily.

The report claimed the fire was deliberately lit by one of the vagrants in an effort to escape from the van. The escorting officials failed to open the door quickly enough; and the vagrants did not stand a chance.

Those responsible were later sentenced to between three and six-and-a-half years in jail for dereliction of duty.

The vagrants had been rounded up on the strength of the two-decade-old Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars.

The State Council recently abolished the measures, an administrative regulation it issued in 1982, after the tragic death of a 27-year-old graphic designer in Guangzhou.

The victim was beaten to death on March 20 in a Guangzhou police clinic; he was detained on March 17 because he was not carrying a valid residency permit and considered a vagrant.

China's civil affairs authority then devised the Measures on Aid and Management for Urban Vagrants and Beggars, which became effective on August 1.

The new regulation stresses voluntary participation and free aid while dealing with vagrants and beggars; and aims to safeguard citizens' freedoms as laid down in the Constitution, said Zhang Shifeng, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Former vagrant- and beggar-holding centres throughout the country have now been turned into centres to provide assistance.

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