Amnesty calls on China to stop harassing quake families

HUMAN RIGHTS group Amnesty International has called on the Chinese government to stop intimidating the parents and relatives of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake on May 12th last year.

The number of children who died has never been released, although some estimates say around 10,000 schoolchildren were among the 80,000 dead, with nearly 18,000 still missing.

Angry parents blame shoddy building – “tofu construction” – for their children’s deaths. More than 8,000 families lost their only child in the disaster.

Despite an initial openness in allowing foreign media to witness the aftermath of the quake, the shutdown of foreign media coverage as public anger rose over shoddily built schoolhouses and public silence on accusations of corruption was swift.

As China’s economy slows, the government is keen to keep a lid on any contentious issues which it feels might lead to social unrest.

Beijing accuses foreign governments and rights groups trying to intervene in the issue of meddling in its internal affairs.

At one of the worst-affected schools, Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan, the death toll was in the hundreds when the classroom building collapsed in the quake, even as nearby apartments and offices remained standing.

Within weeks of the quake it was ringed with a high security fence and patrolled by public security officers, who were quick to stop any efforts to film or report near the area. Locals were unwilling to talk, fearful of retribution.

The Amnesty report, entitled Justice Denied: Harassment of Sichuan Earthquake Survivors and Activists, outlines how officials in the province detained parents and relatives for up to three weeks for trying to seek answers about why their children perished. Some were held repeatedly, and the youngest detainee was only eight years old.

Parents have been placed under surveillance to stop them from pursuing their cases, and some activists who offered assistance along with representatives of parents are facing politically motivated trials on charges of endangering state security, a charge normally levelled at dissidents.

“By unlawfully locking up parents of children who died, the government is creating more misery for people who have said in some cases they lost everything in the Sichuan earthquake,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific deputy programme director.

“I want to seek justice for the dead students. Corruption is rampant in China. The children were still so innocent and suddenly they passed away,” the report quoted the father of a 15-year-old student who died at Beichuan Middle School, as saying.

“Some of their bodies are still buried under the rubble, and we will never find them. That’s why it is so heartbreaking for many parents.

“Except the school building, other buildings in Beichuan county did not collapse during the earthquake. What kind of earthquake was this?”