A Shaolin temple of central China's Henan Province has dismissed four monks for violating the temple's SARS-related regulations.

The temple's decision has been approved by the local administration for religious and ethnic affairs.

In the face of the outbreak and spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Shaolin temple worked out a regulations to prevent the potentially lethal disease, demanding that all monks must ask permission if they need to go out for more than three hours and they have to be quarantined if they stay out for more than 12 hours. Anyone who fails to come back before nightfall will be expelled.

The four monks were punished for staying out the whole night without coming back.

(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2003)