Two men walk on the Danxia landform. /Screenshot
Prosecutors in a northwestern Chinese province have been urged to "seriously investigate and judge" a case in which four tourists damaged a protected Danxia landform in a national park.
Though the four tourists are said to have voluntarily confessed their crime on August 28, the chief procurator of the Procuratorate of Gansu Province, Zhang Yu, has urged the procuratorate in the city of Zhangye where the incident happened to formally pursue the matter.
The advice was contained in the Procuratorate Daily, a newspaper under the country’s supreme procuratorate.
Two video clips showing several tourists walking on the UNESCO's cultural heritage Danxia landform have spread widely on music video platform Tik Tok. In the videos, the tourists even raised the dust from the landscape with their feet, saying, "it feels good to sneak into the park without a ticket."
As the footage went viral, social media users criticized the four's ignorance about the natural landscape, suggesting a serious punishment be handed out.
"They have to take the criminal liability," @Nikannaguniangjiuxiangduohuoer commented on Sina Weibo.
"They should be seriously penalized in order to let more people be aware of this," @Xueyijiubuliaozhuduiyou posted.
"They should be asked to reform through labor. They can be released till the landscape recovered," @Annijushi7087 suggested.
In response to the incident, the park administration published a statement, saying that they had carried out an investigation jointly with the tourism, public security, and land and resources authorities. The administration also declared that the park planned to implement a real-name ticketing system from next year and place the tourists who flout the rules on a blacklist.
The Tik Tok has removed the video clips and permanently blocked the accounts uploading the videos.
