HONG KONG—Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuanhave prevented journalists from gaining access to a school that collapsedduring the May 12 earthquake, amid widespread calls for investigations into thequality of school buildings.
The Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureauhas ordered all media to stop covering Juyuan Middle School,where buildings collapsed during the quake, killing 280 students and teachers,a local official said.
“On June 2, the Sichuan provincial PublicSecurity Bureau ordered all media to leave JuyuanMiddle School alone,” an official atthe Dujiangyan Disaster Relief Information Centersaid.
She said police had cordoned off the area. “Some parents are very emotionallydisturbed and they are not emotionally stable. So for the time being,authorities have to make some temporary rules,” she said.
Police have cordoned off the school site and escorted two foreign journalistsaway from the school, grieving parents at the site said.
“The school site has been sealed off. No media are allowed,” a woman surnamedDong who lost a child in the collapse of the school said. “More than 100 policeare present at the scene. Today, Australian journalists were expelled from theschool site,” she added.
Lawyers hard to find
She said local officials had pledged to give each victim’s family 32,000yuan (U.S. $4,600) in comfort money—higher than the standard 5,000 yuancompensation for other quake victims.
Dong said some parents had already received 12,000 yuan. “The government haspledged to take care of our health care and retirement, but it never saidanything about seeking justice for our innocent children,” she said.
She said the parents had hoped to band together and find a lawyer to sue thegovernment for negligence, but so far no lawyer had been willing to take it onin the absence of an expert evaluation of the school’s construction.
“No one dares to take the case,” she said. “It all depends on how governmentdefines the nature of the school buildings. If they say it was shoddyconstruction, then it was shoddy construction, but if they say it wasn’t thenit wasn’t.”
“If the court takes the case, it is like government suing itself. Thereforethat’s unlikely to happen. We don’t want to withdraw our case by simply takingthe 32,000 yuan from the government. We are hoping that a volunteer lawyer maytake our case.”
The story is being repeated in cities, towns, and villages around the quake-hitzone, where 10,000 schoolchildren are believed to have died in collapsed schoolbuildings when the 7.9 magnitude tremor hit.
Call for investigation
In Shifang city, more than 200 parents called on the municipal government topublish a conclusion about safety standards in the collapsed school buildings.
“We want the government to tell us whether it was the earthquake or man-madefactors that brought down the school buildings,” grieving parent Wang Zhenfusaid. “The township government told us that experts would come to investigateon June 5, but no one showed up either yesterday or today.”
“They told us that the experts were very busy. They are just dragging out the issueas long as they can.”
Wang said parents were demanding a clear set of results from the officialinvestigation by June 10.
Shifang government official Jiang Zhi said that could take time. “We have requested that the experts take samples from the collapsed buildingsand send the samples to the proper authorities,” he said. “But it takes time todraw a conclusion. Our area is the epicenter, and there are many damaged buildingsthat need to be tested.”
‘Not for the money’
Since the earthquake the government and the insurance companies have paidout a total of 29,000 yuan in compensation to parents who lost their childrenwhen their schools collapsed in Longju township, Shifang.
Several hundred parents whose children died in Longju have been petitioning thelocal authorities to pursue whoever was responsible for the collapse of theschool buildings, saying that shoddy construction was to blame for the deathsof their children.
“They’re not doing this for the money. They are doing it to get justice onbehalf of all the children who died. There were serious quality problems withthe buildings that collapsed. The educational authorities determined before theearthquake that the building was dangerous,” he said. The building was given some cosmetic changes by the school leadership andpassed the safety inspection.
Meanwhile, a parent surnamed Ma from Mianzhu city, whose 17-year-old daughterwas killed when her school collapsed, said that help was very slow to arrive:too late for his only child.
“The school buildings collapsed during the earthquake,” Ma said. “Many childrenwere yelling for help under the rubble. We were trying to help them, but wecouldn’t, as we didn’t have the tools.”
Inexperienced rescue teams
“We helped to remove bricks and helped theheavy machines to remove large pieces of concrete slabs. The rescue teams didn’tshow up until May 14,” he said. “They saved seven or eight people from thedebris. One of my daughter’s friends told me that many kids were still buriedunder the rubble. My daughter was found and pulled out on May 15, but she hadalready died.”
Ma said many of the soldiers and armed police who manned the rescue teams werevery young. While some of them were very brave, they appeared to have littleexperience in recuing quake victims. Local officials, he said, were anxious to look good in the eyes of theirsuperiors.
“Right after the quake, the local government reported to the higher authoritiesthat we were able to help ourselves, but actually, we were not.”
China’sofficial statistics say that 69,127 were confirmed dead from the quake, with more than 1 million people found and rescued. Total donations from Chinaand overseas had reached U.S.$6.34 billion, which would be closely monitored bynational auditors to ensure it was properly used, the official Xinhua newsagency reported.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao and Qiao Long, and in Cantoneseby Bat Tzi-mo. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese servicedirector: Shiny Li. Translated and written for the Web in English by Jia Yuanand Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.