[news] Venezuela shaken by 5.6-magnitude quake
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[news] Moderate quake jolts southwest China's Sichuan
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[news] School Construction Critic Gets Prison Term in China
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[news] Activist who challenged China on quake deaths gets 3-year sentence
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[news] China jails earthquake activist
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Veteran dissident Huang Qi given three years for critical website articles about regime's response to Sichuan disaster
A Chinese court has sentenced a veteran dissident convicted of spying to three years in prison.
Huang Qi was convicted of illegally possessing state secrets by the Wuhou district court in the western city of Chengdu, his wife Zeng Li said by telephone.
Zeng said no details were given about the charge, an ill-defined accusation often used by Communist leaders to clamp down on dissent and imprison activists.
Huang was detained on 10 June 2008 after posting articles on his website criticising the government's response to the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that killed about 90,000 people. Huang also spoke to foreign media about parents' criticism that their children had been crushed in badly built schools. The government has tried to suppress such complaints.
Zeng said Huang was taken directly from the court without being allowed to speak. She believed he would appeal the sentence.
Calls to the court and Huang's lawyer, Mo Shaoping, rang unanswered.
Huang previously served a five-year prison sentence on subversion charges linked to politically sensitive articles posted on his website.
Since his release in 2005 he had supported a wide range of causes, including families of those killed in the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing and farmers involved in land disputes with authorities.
[news] Earthquake works banned from Beijing art show
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Artistic director of Beijing 798 Biennale says deputy wanted publicity from booking 'too sensitive' performance artists
阅读中文 | Read this in Chinese
Works about the Sichuan earthquake and other sensitive issues have been banned from a Beijing art show that was to involve controversial figures, its artistic director said today.
The group exhibition at the 798 space, a former electronics factory in the Dashanzi art district, north-east of central Beijing, covered themes including the death of children in schools that collapsed in the quake. The show, the centrepiece of the Beijing 798 Biennale, reopened today but without some of the contentious works.
Zhu Qi, the artistic director of the Biennale, said he told the exhibition's deputy director not to include performance art involving people likely to stir up controversy. They included "Runner Fan", a teacher who became notorious after posting an article on the web saying he fled his school ahead of his pupils during the earthquake; Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent blogger and lawyer; and the owners of the Chongqing nailhouse who became famous for refusing to leave their home even when developers demolished all the buildings around it.
"I had not approved it because I thought it was too sensitive. But he wanted the publicity," Zhu said.
Local officials failed to respond when the district's managers notified them of the show's content, leading the managers to ban several works – including a drama performed by migrant workers, a documentary on the earthquake and a memorial to a 12-year-old victim of the disaster. Some artists then decided to withdraw and demolished their own works.
Zhu said he had first raised the possibility of including the contentious figures, but later decided it was better to go ahead without them.
Yuan Tingxuan, speaking for the artists involved, said they had withdrawn from the biennale as a result but managed to hold performances – including those with Fan and Liu – at other venues in the district. He said either staff from the management office or police officers had come to take photos of the artists, but otherwise they had felt no pressure.
Yuan said the group chose to work with controversial figures who had gained fame online because the internet was now such an important part of life. "We also hope from [our working with] these people, more and more artists would start concerning themselves with society rather than being only engaged in their own small, internal, arty world," he added.
[news] A year on from the Chinese earthquake, love flourishes amid ruins of Sichuan
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Yin Huajun and Zhu Yuncui are newly-weds and it shows. It's the way Yuncui nestles into his shoulder, the pride with which they show their wedding pictures, and the self-consciousness as they nudge each other to speak.
Their home is a prefabricated cube, with metal walls and a concrete floor, in a camp for earthquake survivors. But a cosy armchair sits in a corner and a bright curtain screens off their bed. In their laps, the couple hold cherished possessions from the days before the disaster: framed photographs of his late wife and her late husband.
Today will mark the first anniversary of the 7.9-magnitude shock that tore through Sichuan, killing up to 90,000 and leaving 5 million people homeless. In Beichuan, where the couple lived, as few as 4,000 of the town's 22,000 residents survived. Most were separated from those they loved – the quake struck in early afternoon, when families were scattered across fields, factories, shops and schools.
For both Huajun and Yuncui, it destroyed marriages spanning two decades. Yet eight months later, in January, they chose to wed again.
At least 600 survivors from the town have remarried and officials hope that more will follow in the near future. The authorities have paid for group weddings and plan to hold a matchmaking fair. A local women's group has hired an agent to help widows find love again.
These "restructured families" offer more than emotional support. Sichuan is a poor region. Households with two adults are more likely to support themselves financially. They also require not two homes but one, lessening the strain of the mammoth reconstruction programme.
Yang Yongfu, Beichuan's deputy civil affairs chief, has warned that remarriage will be "anything but easy". Enduring grief, and disputes over property, children and responsibilities, all pile pressure on couples. "These new families often have children and in-laws from the previous marriage. Some families need to care for eight elderly people and four children," he added.
Huajun and Yuncui's children are grown up and supported their parents' decision. But her son Wang Cao slips from the room, eyes red with grief, as his mother recalls his "gentle, hardworking" father.
"Sometimes she talks about her late husband and I mention my late wife. We trust each other," said Huajun.
Both were away from their homes when the quake struck at 2.28pm on 12 May 2008. Struggling to his feet, Huajun looked across the valley to his house and saw only a mound of rubble.
Yuncui survived because she was slow to escape from the third floor of her factory. Seven women fleeing ahead of her disappeared as the staircase collapsed. Then the roof fell in, pinning her and her colleague under rubble.
"We screamed for help all afternoon but no one came. We had no idea how terrible it was outside," she said.
Buildings had keeled over or crumbled, landslides had buried large parts of the town and boulders the size of cars had crushed everything in their path.
Glimpsing a tiny speck of daylight, Yuncui vowed to work herself free. Hours later, she hauled herself out and pulled her friend free. They stepped off the building: the third floor now stood just one metre above ground.
Across town, her home had collapsed upon her husband. "I couldn't accept that he was gone. Every man I saw looked like him," she said.
In August, she was among 5,000 survivors to move into the settlement in Mianyang. A few streets away, Huajun was living alone and drinking heavily: "I hoped to make myself numb," he said. But when his aunt introduced him to Yuncui he could not help noticing both her sweet nature and her dogged independence. She was struck by his respect for her children and his dedication to his job as a community worker. A few months later, they wed.
The accelerated pace of their relationship reflects the speed with which survivors have tried to rebuild their lives. In Yongxing there are grocery shops, cafes, and a shop selling TV sets and electric fans. New year messages are pasted at the doorways and neighbours gather to chat. But the illusion of normality is a thin one. Families of six are often squeezed into these little cubes, and the sound of the television next door reverberates through slight walls. Outside, posters along the streets illustrate common trauma symptoms.
The government has promised Beichuan residents permanent homes by the end of the year. But despite impressive reconstruction efforts, the scale of need remains overwhelming. Across the earthquake zone, some still live in makeshift shelters of planks and canvas. Others wonder how to scrape together cash for even the affordable new homes promised by the government. There is plenty of casual labour on construction sites, but few long-term jobs on offer.
In this transient environment, people who have lost everything yearn for a new anchor.
"In the older generation, Chinese people didn't remarry after their spouse died," said Zhang Yong, the settlement's burly policeman, who wed again recently. "But if you live alone there's no one to talk to and share your thoughts with. My wife lost her son so her hurt is even worse than mine."
He hoped for companionship, financial stability and a maternal influence for his 11-year-old twin daughters. But his home unit lacks the cosiness of Yuncui and Huajun's. It is sparsely furnished, with a desk but no sofa and bunk beds in the corner. A pink plastic mirror taped to the wall is the sole feminine touch.
"Legally we are married, but not practically," he said. His new wife is an official too, assigned to a centre two hours away. His daughters board at school in the week. When shifts work out, they see each other weekly; more often, they snatch a day or so each fortnight. For Zhang, as for millions across Sichuan, the warmth and security of his past life remains a distant dream.
He pulled on his cigarette and gazed at the ceiling. "After everything settles down we will all live together and make a real family," he promised himself.
[news] China releases earthquake death toll of children
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Days before the anniversary of the earthquake that killed nearly 90,000 people in a mountainous region of south-western China, officials have finally announced the number of schoolchildren who died.
The figure of 5,335 is lower than previous estimates and some parents have questioned its accuracy. Overall, the authorities say that around 70,000 people died in the Sichuan earthquake and another 18,000 are presumed dead.
The children's deaths caused outrage because thousands of school classrooms collapsed, in many cases while buildings around them stood firm.
Chinese officials said that the magnitude of the earthquake was to blame, but experts blamed poor design, substandard building work and lax enforcement of standards.
As pressure built the authorities stifled discussion of the issue and parents suffered harassment and detention for protesting – with even an eight-year-old boy held on one occasion, according to an Amnesty International report last week.
One father, who asked not to be named, told the Guardian: "We protested for justice but it didn't really work out ... When we tried to deal with it by legal means we didn't succeed, so there's no way for us to relieve our suffering."
Shortly after the earthquake Reuters estimated that around 9,000 schoolchildren died, using figures from reports by the state news agency and local media.
[news] Sichuan earthquake killed more than 5,000 pupils, says China
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• First official tally of victims when schools collapsed last year
• Figures released days before anniversary of disaster
China said today that 5,335 schoolchildren and students had died or remained missing after last year's Sichuan earthquake, the first official tally in what became a politically charged issue because of allegations of corruption and shoddy school construction.
The overall death toll in the May 12 quake was unchanged at 68,712. Almost 18,000 people are still listed as missing, the head of Sichuan civil affairs department, Huang Mingquan, said in the provincial capital of Chengdu.
The government began a count of the dead and missing within hours of the magnitude 7.9 quake, which destroyed huge portions of Sichuan, but authorities have refused until now to say how many pupils were killed when thousands of classrooms collapsed while buildings around them remained intact.
The issue has been an enduring source of grief for parents. They say the schools crumbled so easily because corruption and mismanagement led to slipshod construction methods and weak buildings that were not up to standard. Some say materials meant for school construction projects were sold by contractors for personal gain.
Parents who protested have been detained or warned against speaking out. Activists sympathetic to their cause have been harassed or taken away by police.
Officials blamed the power of the quake for the number of flattened schools, and said compiling and confirming the names of the pupils was a complicated process.
No reason was given for the release of the figures today , days before the first anniversary of the disaster.
In a transcript of the press conference posted on the Sichuan government's website, officials said that "once there is concrete evidence to prove that problems exist in building designs and construction, relevant departments will investigate according to law".
Liu Xiaoying, whose 12-year-old daughter was killed when the three-storey Fuxin No 2 primary school collapsed, said she was sure the toll was much higher. "I hope the investigation will continue and that the people responsible will be seriously punished," she said.
Liu is under surveillance after travelling to Beijing twice to petition the central government. "I hope the government will really do what they say they would and not brush off us parents," she said. "If this is the case, the hearts of my husband and I will be more at ease."
Ai Weiwei, an artist and high-profile critic of Beijing's policies, said the announcement was a sign that the government may be caving in to "pressure of the common people, pressure from the media," but it was still an empty gesture.
"There's no significance to this announcement because it didn't give any names or any other information on where they died, which schools or which classes they were in," Ai said. "This is nonsense."
In his blog, Ai has confirmed almost 5,000 pupil names and estimates that the toll could reach 8,000. He said that at least 20 of his helpers had been detained by local authorities.
Tan Zuoren, who conducted his own investigation into 64 schools in the quake zone, has estimated that more than 5,600 pupils are dead or missing. Tan, who has since been detained on suspicion of subversion, said that number was incomplete.
The official China Daily newspaper today reported that a circular issued by the cabinet had ordered safety controls for the construction of schools to be strengthened. The circular those who engaged in illegal practices would be severely punished.
[news] History of deadly earthquakes
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[news] China to spend £800m on making schools in earthquake zones safe
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China to strengthen buildings after deaths of thousands of children in Sichuan disaster
The Chinese government will spend an extra 8bn yuan (£800m) to strengthen schools in earthquake-prone areas after thousands of pupils died in the Sichuan disaster last year, state media reported today.
The news comes a day after activists reported that a man had been detained for attempting to organise a full tally of students who died in their schools.
Up to 90,000 people are thought to have died when a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit south-western China in May last year. But some parents blame shoddy construction linked to corruption for their children's deaths, pointing out that many school buildings collapsed while surrounding structures withstood the shock.
A statement issued by the State Council, China's cabinet, said schools in earthquake-susceptible areas would be reinforced, adding: "The safety of school buildings directly relates to the safety of teachers and students, and is related to social harmony and stability."
Official newspapers said the project would take three years and focus on schools in the poorer central and western parts of the country.
The chair of the committee investigating the earthquake has acknowledged that poor quality building may have played a part in the deaths of so many children, but the authorities began suppressing discussion of the issue after public outrage mounted. Parents have been harassed and detained for protesting.
Yesterday the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network said that police had detained activist Tan Zuoren on state subversion charges. Calls to his family home went unanswered.
The network said that in February this year he had published a proposal urging internet users and parents who had lost their children to compile a list of the victims. He also called for an investigation into the quality of school buildings which collapsed and the treatment of bereaved parents.
Police have previously detained at least three other activists pressing for information about the dead children.
One was sentenced to a year in a labour camp for posting pictures of collapsed schools on the internet, while another has been in detention for nine months, charged with "illegal possession of state secrets".
[news] Dam could have triggered Chinese earthquake, say scientists
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Weight of water may have affected disaster that killed 90,000 in Sichuan last year
Pressure from a large dam could have helped to trigger the earthquake which killed up to 90,000 people in south-west China last year, some scientists have claimed.
Chinese and overseas experts suggested that the weight of waters in the Zipingpu Dam in Sichuan may have affected the timing or scale of the 7.9 magnitude quake. The dam stands just 3.5 miles from the epicentre.
Scientists agree that dams can produce tremors. But several today played down the claims that this was an issue in Sichuan, arguing that the area lies on an active fault line and that the shock was too great for the reservoir to be a major factor.
Fan Xiao, a chief engineer at the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, said May's earthquake was the largest in the area for thousands of years and suggested that the weight of the reservoir's waters – 315m tonnes – was a key factor.
"I'm not saying the earthquake would not have happened without the dam, but the presence of the massive Zipingpu dam may have changed the size or time of the quake, thus creating a more violent quake," he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Fan said sudden changes in the water level – like the rapid drop at Zipingpu shortly before the quake – could greatly destabilise an existing fault.
He added that he had opposed the dam's construction in 2003 because he was worried about such a disaster and was concerned that dams are now being built on the Dadu and Jinsha rivers to the west and north-west of the quake zone.
The Chinese government has promoted the building of large dams to reduce flooding and meet the country's energy needs without increasing pollution from coal-fired power stations.
Christian Klose, a geophysical hazards research scientist from Columbia University in New York, has also suggested the extra water could have triggered the earthquake.
But in a blog posting on the subject he warned: "Scientific evidence for such a statement is needed! Some questions need to be answered: How much water was impounded, where and when? Did resulting stress changes alter stresses deep in the Earth's crust? Were stress alterations significantly large enough? Where was the highest seismic energy release – close to the reservoir?"
Dr Alex Densmore of Durham University, who was studying the Sichuan fault before the quake and has carried out further work there since, said he was "pretty sceptical".
"The fault the earthquake happened on is active; we know there have been earthquakes there in the past and geologically that happened yesterday – just a few thousand years ago. It's impossible to say whether or not the reservoir might have advanced the time of the earthquake, but if it did so it did it by a very short period.
"The size of the earthquake is ultimately determined by the length of the fault which breaks and how far the two sides move relative to each other. A reservoir by itself isn't going to affect those things … It won't give you a bigger earthquake than you would otherwise have had."
Dr Roger Musson of the British Geological Survey said the Aswan Dam was a good example of how large reservoirs could produce earthquakes in previously unaffected areas.
But he said he would be extremely doubtful that the Sichuan dam had played a role unless there was a record of smaller quakes dating back to when it was filled.
Musson added: "That kind of [induced] earthquake can go up to magnitude 6.5, let's say. This earthquake was totally outside that level and was on a 300km-long rupture. That's a major tectonic fault.
"To my mind it's a sterile discussion [anyway] – either the earthquake is going to happen or it's not. If you have advanced it by a year or two, is that a big deal?"
Lei Xinglin, a geophysicist at the government's China Earthquake Administration, called for further investigation.
"A reservoir in the region will have positive and negative effects on a potential earthquake, but it is ridiculous to say an earthquake was caused by the dam," he told AP.
"We still need to carefully research this topic rather than jumping to conclusions."
[news] Sichuan quake activist to be tried in Chinese court on secrets charge
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Huang Qi arrested for trying to hold officials accountable over collapse of shoddily built schools, say supporters
A Chinese court will tomorrow try a human rights activist for illegal possession of state secrets after he helped parents whose children died in last year's devastating earthquake, his wife has said.
Huang Qi, 45, was detained in Sichuan in June, a month after the disaster killed up to 90,000 in the province. Many were pupils who died when their schools collapsed.
The chair of the committee investigating the earthquake has acknowledged that shoddy building may have played a part in the deaths of so many children. But authorities have clamped down on discussion of the subject and in Sichuan protesting parents have been harassed and briefly detained.
Huang's wife, Zeng Li, said the court in Chengdu, the provincial capital, told her today that he would be tried on the state security charge.
"They didn't say what specifically he was accused of and they have not allowed him or the lawyers to see any documents or evidence," she told Reuters. "It was because of the earthquake and putting out statements on behalf of the families and helping them with advice."
The charge carries a sentence of up to three years in prison.
Lawyers and even judges are not allowed to see the documents in question or challenge their classification, said Nicholas Bequelin, a China specialist at Human Rights Watch.
"There's no real avenue to challenge the validity of whatever authorities classify as a state secret," said Bequelin. "My understanding is that the case against Huang has no validity. He was arrested because he tried to hold officials accountable for specific schools that collapsed."
Mo Shaoping, one of Huang's lawyers, said the defence team had not been told the charges or the trial date, and there was little hope of postponing. He had learned of the case only via Zeng.
"This is a serious violation of Huang Qi's right to a defence," Mo added.
Huang founded his Tianwang website a decade ago to reunite families with missing people. Others began posting articles on sensitive issues such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, resulting in the banning of the site and Huang's imprisonment for two years for inciting subversion. He was released in 2005.
The site, now hosted overseas, is still blocked in China. But Huang remains well-known for helping ordinary people defend their rights.
In a scathing letter of protest following his arrest, several web commentators in Sichuan asked: "Is any citizen fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to see or hear any information inconsistent with government talking points then in illegal possession of state secrets? … That would suggest that every single earthquake victim who spoke with Huang is also in illegal possession of state secrets."
A court official said he did not know about the case and would not answer questions from foreign media.
[news] Majority of China earthquake victims still unidentified
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Six months after the Sichuan earthquake, only a quarter of the 70,000 victims have been identified, says official
Six months after the Sichuan earthquake, only around a quarter of the 70,000 victims have been identified, a Chinese official said today.
The details emerged as leaders of the south-western province warned that survivors faced a grim winter, with some living in tents with little insulation and struggling to find sufficient food and warm clothing. The 7.9-magnitude shock left almost 4 million people homeless.
Temperatures can fall to well below freezing in the mountains and Wei Hong, the executive vice-governor of Sichuan, said experts predicted they would be up to one degree Celsius colder than usual this year.
"Some senior citizens and children are in need of basic equipment to keep them warm," he said. "People in some quake-stricken areas even face the tough problem of provisions for this winter and the coming spring."
Wei said that a staggering amount of work was still needed, and that the region would need 3 trillion yuan (£296bn) by 2010.
By the middle of this month, almost 200,000 homes had been rebuilt and 685,000 homes were under reconstruction. But another 1.94m households still needed to be rebuilt or repaired and sites were still being selected for 25 townships which needed to be relocated.
Asked how many students had died in schools that collapsed in the quake, Wei said 19,065.
However, Li Jiang, from the Sichuan provincial propaganda office, later said that figure referred to the total number of bodies identified, blaming mistranslation by an official interpreter.
The deaths of thousands of children in collapsed schools became a highly sensitive issue for the authorities after outrage spread through China about shoddy building standards.
Reports have been banished from the media and parents who sought investigations or tried to sue local authorities have been harassed.
Soldiers took photographs and hair and blood samples before burying victims in mass graves in the hope that DNA testing might identify bodies in the future.
But given the devastation wrought by the earthquake, some bodies may never be recovered. In some cases, there may be few relatives left to identify victims.
On top of the 70,000 confirmed dead, 18,000 people are still listed as missing.
"Most of our cadres and people have overcome the shadow of the earthquake," Wei said. "They are working hard to rebuild their homes and most have found balance in their lives."
Asked about the suicide of two officials in the quake zone in as many months, he said: "We recognise that the earthquake has still left some deeply damaged in their hearts. We are very sympathetic about the suicides, but the reason for the suicides is not just the trauma but other causes too."
[news] China: The parents bereaved by the Sichuan earthquake
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Thousands of schoolchildren died in the Sichuan earthquake. Their parents blame corrupt or incompetent builders and local officials, yet Beijing seems keener to gag the bereaved than punish the culprits. Report by Tania Branigan. Pictures by Dan Chung
[news] Tania Branigan on China's gag on the angry families who lost children in the Sichuan earthquake
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Thousands of schoolchildren died in the Sichuan earthquake. Their parents blame corrupt or incompetent builders and local officials, yet Beijing seems keener to gag the bereaved than punish the culprits. Report by Tania Branigan. Pictures by Dan Chung
He was nothing special, except to his parents. Not a trophy winner or football champion; not the class joker or swot. He was small for a 12-year-old, with glasses and a tentative smile - the sort of boy who blurs into the crowd in school photos, who stands aside in the corner of a playground.
"He was born prematurely, at less than eight months. He wasn't very strong, so we spent all our money seeking treatment for him," his mother told me. "We had so many hopes and expectations for him: he was the source of all our mental strength. We didn't expect him to be a 'great man' - but we hoped he would be a good one. Now we hope the government can give us a satisfactory explanation and justice."
She was speaking less than a fortnight after her son had been crushed in the total collapse of Fuxin No 2 Elementary in Mianzhu, Sichuan. He was one of 4,700 children who died when their schools crumbled around them in the earthquake that ripped through south-west China on May 12. Three months on, the government has made extraordinary strides in rebuilding a province where at least 70,000 died. Temporary homes and basic amenities have appeared with startling speed. Adults are back at business; children have returned to study. At the Olympic opening ceremony, a nine-year-old survivor, who saved several classmates, bore the Chinese flag alongside basketball player Yao Ming.
Yet behind the image of communal resilience lies an uglier story. The authorities are striving to aid millions of survivors. But they are also doing their best to silence angry families who want to know why so many schools collapsed when the buildings around them endured.
No one is speaking for these parents. Not the foreign protesters who have flagged up issues such as Tibet and religious freedom through demonstrations in Beijing. Not non-governmental organisations in Sichuan, which are painfully aware that supporting them would spell the end to their other work there. And not the handful of activists who tried, but earned themselves detention. Instead, parents are speaking for themselves, despite the harassment and threats that have dogged them over the past eight weeks. They have been dragged away from protests, prevented from travelling to Beijing to air their complaints, and warned against talking to foreign reporters.
"Now they do not even allow us to gather together," one man told me. He had agreed to speak by telephone, despite his concern that the call might be monitored. "The officials asked us to be patient. They told us we need to support the Olympics, and after the Olympics they will sort this out. But we have been waiting for such a long time ... I guess they hope that if the time is long enough we will just forget this."
When I came across Fuxin, I had been in Sichuan, covering the earthquake's aftermath, for almost two weeks; it was the sixth ruined school I had found.
By the government's estimates, 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the tremor. In Dujiangyan, children lay on the street in body bags; in Hanwang, they were stored on concrete ping-pong tables in the schoolyard; in Beichuan, the ground was thick with small corpses, ghostly with dust. The air stank of death. A teenager described lying trapped under rubble, touching the cooling skin of a classmate and knowing that she was dead. Another young boy came up to ask if anyone knew the fate of his best friend. Everywhere you went there were small bodies and welling pain and anger - magnified by the needlessness of their deaths.
In areas such as Beichuan, the force of the quake destroyed almost everything in its path. Homes and shops and offices were thrown sideways or simply crashed to the ground. Schools suffered because everything did. But in other areas, such as Dujiangyan, schools crumbled while the buildings around them stood almost unscathed. Fuxin was another of those, and the contrast between the surrounding structures and the rubble of the classrooms had roused parents' fury. Most were farmers or small traders; they were poor, largely uneducated people, who had never challenged authority.
Pain overwhelmed their fear. The parents were not just willing to confront officials; they were desperate to do so. Each day, they gathered at the site, lit candles at a makeshift shrine to their children and waited for the authorities to come and apologise. Unclaimed schoolbags lay in a grimy pile; books, pencils and a scatter of fuchsia sequins poked through the dust.
The Guardian's photographer and I arrived shortly after the town's education chief finally came to pay his respects, following repeated requests from the parents. He said the matter was under investigation, then added: "I feel sad too, but it's a natural disaster." He reminded them that 11 schools had collapsed across the city. Before us, the families' grief was metastasising into anger - a rage impossible to ignore as the parents screamed into his imperturbable face: "Why are your hearts so black?" "Why did our children die?" Fathers hacked at the remains to demonstrate concrete you could brush away like powder and thin steel frames that had buckled beyond recognition. They believed that substandard construction had claimed the lives of the 127 students who died here; and those of many more students in other schools across the province.
Across the country, millions of Chinese citizens were drawing the same conclusion. Public outrage was swelling. The state media asked awkward questions and experts came forward to condemn poor design and construction. The investigative magazine Caijing examined five schools and claimed that none of the sites had been surveyed. The government fielded questions online and promised an inquiry into whether poor building work, linked to corruption, was to blame.
When the Fuxin parents marched to higher authorities, the Communist party secretary for Mianzhu city got on his knees to beg them to stop. They ignored him. Throughout the quake zone, the authorities were showing not just humility but unusual openness. They welcomed volunteers from across the country, invited overseas relief teams and allowed reporters to cover the disaster unhindered.
For a few days in the wake of our visit it seemed as if the parents' questions might be answered. The thaw did not last long. Within weeks, the censors had ordered the media to drop the subject. Within the month, police were dragging parents away from protests. The families fought back, at first. They threatened to register their dead children for the new school year. They pledged to sue. They protested outside government offices. They spoke to activists whom they hoped might help them.
But by the time I returned to Fuxin, there was no sign of the angry demonstrations I had witnessed. The ruins of the school were guarded through the day. Plain-clothes police were watching the site, and the homes of the most vocal parents. Many of the relatives, once desperate to tell their children's stories, were now too frightened to talk. "They don't see the point of speaking to the foreign media; they don't think it's helped," one mother said. She had agreed to meet me at a nearby market and we drove around the back roads of the area, past lush, green rice fields, to avoid the attention of public security officials while we talked. Though a loyal party member, she feared retaliation if she was caught; like all those I spoke to this time, she asked not to be named.
The previous day, five of the parents had planned to catch a train to Beijing, to petition the central authorities. It is one of the few routes left to those who believe local officials are ignoring them. But an edict from on high had warned provincial governments to ensure "zero protests, zero petitioners to Beijing" in the run-up to the Olympics.
"The Public Security Bureau were waiting for our representatives when they went to buy tickets at the station. I think they must have a list of us all because they knew who they were, and told them not to go. They have told us not to make trouble," she said. "We don't want compensation; we just want someone held accountable. We don't want this to happen again," she added. As she spoke, she stroked a tiny photograph of her daughter. She was, she thought, too old to have another child; she did not sound as if she had the heart to try.
The Fuxin parents sought a full investigation. Instead, they were offered money: 60,000 yuan (£4,500), a huge sum by Chinese standards, but one that came at a cost. Parents reported coming under intense pressure to apply for the cash by signing a document that included a promise to abide by the law and maintain social order - in other words, stop protesting.
"We are not pursuing wealth; we just need justice - we want the people who deserve it to be punished," an angry father told us. "But they were extremely eager that we would sign. They forced and deceived us. The officials stayed in our rooms until 11pm or 12pm, and they told us that others all signed this and if you did not sign you would be the only person who got nothing.
"So we signed, and the next day we found that they told everybody this. We found out that we had been cheated. They got rid of the evidence, the wreckage of the school [which they levelled]. They said they had to do it to prevent infectious diseases, but it was just because it showed that the building was dangerous. My child should not have died." There was, he added, little sign of the investigation that the authorities had promised.
"I thought the government would give us justice, but it now seems that is impossible," wept another woman. "Some people still tell us that the government will solve this, but most of us think that they've been bought by officials. I haven't cried in the last three months, but I do now. Before, I thought the government would help us and if we had any trouble we could go to them. But when we went to them there was no one there."
Nor can the parents turn to outside assistance. Last month, a human rights group reported that a teacher from Sichuan had been sentenced to a year's re-education in a labour camp for "disseminating rumours and destroying social order" - that is, photographing the ruins of the schools and circulating the pictures on the internet, along with criticism of the construction standards.
Liu Shaokun is thought to be the third person held for posting such material. The family of Huang Qi, a long-standing human rights activist from Sichuan, says he was formally arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets" after helping bereaved parents and posting articles about structural failings of schools on his website. One of his articles was about Zeng Hongling, a former academic, who may have been first to be detained. According to a Hong Kong-based rights group she has been held on subversion charges after posting online essays attacking shoddy construction.
The crackdown is all the more striking because the parents have never sought to challenge Beijing's authority. It is not an issue of national sovereignty, such as Tibet; or about restraints on alternative power structures, such as religion. They were not questioning the legitimacy of the government. They were simply embarrassing it at a moment when international attention to China made officials particularly sensitive. The country's increasing space for dissent, carved out over recent years, has been squeezed by the pressure to perfect its image ahead of the Olympics. The families' voices were potent and numerous; and the problem was too complex for a single person or department to take the rap.
Corrupt officials siphoning off cash may have played a part in places. But so too, it seems, did inept designers, untrained labourers, contractors who themselves took an illicit cut of the budget, the factories who churned out poor-quality materials and the supervisors who failed to spot problems. "There was no one person clearly responsible for the incident; you would need to overhaul the whole system," says Nicholas Bequelin, a China specialist at Human Rights Watch.
The authorities' response to such complex issues was recognisable from previous scandals, he adds: pressure to take compensation in place of real redress. "The government gives signs that it's serious and transparent and more accountable - but then these efforts fade away."
"One problem," he says, "is the absence of a free press to keep the issue in the headlines. The incentive for finding out things that are going to embarrass you is just not there. A second is local inertia. Once [central government] officials have left, and the issue is not in their minds, the provincial bureaucracy reasserts itself in the old ways. It's a problem we have with a lot of positive steps the government takes."
Earlier this month, the authorities announced a £76bn recovery plan for the quake zone, promising to prioritise the reconstruction of schools and hospitals - and vowing to make them "extremely safe and solid structures the public can feel reassured about". It is not the first time school safety has been on the government's agenda. According to Caijing, last year Sichuan put aside £55m to improve dangerous buildings. An at-risk register was compiled. Fuxin was not on it.
[news] Sichuan quake: China's earthquake reconstruction to cost $150bn
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· High-quality buildings government's priority
· Homes needed for 3.9m refugees and jobs for 1m
The Chinese government faces a repair bill of almost $150bn (£76bn) from the Sichuan earthquake, equivalent to a fifth of its entire tax revenues for a single year, the state media reported yesterday.
Providing new houses for 3.9 million refugees, replacing schools and creating jobs for 1 million people are among the measures in an ambitious plan to rebuild the region devastated by the magnitude 8 quake, which struck on May 12.
Amid criticism that corruption and lax building standards may have contributed to the 69,225 death toll - particularly in collapsed schools - the authorities said a central focus of reconstruction would be high-quality public buildings.
"We will make the reconstruction of public service facilities such as schools and hospitals our priority ... and turn them into extremely safe and solid structures that the public can feel reassured about," stated a draft plan issued by the National Development and Reform Commission.
The commission - which steers China's economy - said an investment of 1 trillion yuan ($147bn) would be needed to pay for the plan. The sum surpasses the $120bn reconstruction bill for the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan. It is equal to the entire economic output of Sichuan last year and three times what Beijing spent rebuilding the capital in preparation for the Olympics.
The plan envisages building 169 hospitals and 4,432 primary and middle schools to replace collapsed structures in the three quake-hit provinces: Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi.
Another 2,600 schools that remained standing will be strengthened.
Under the plan, more than 3 million homeless rural families will get new houses and 860,000 apartments in the city will be built.
Welfare programmes will also be expanded to help the 1.4 million people driven into poverty by the disaster.
Job creation schemes will centre on an expanded 150 km-long urban corridor stretching from the provincial capital Chengdu to Mianyang. No timetable was set for the task, but the central government has previously set an eight-year goal to return people's lives to normal.
Even if the budget is allocated, that will be a momentous task. According to the state media, the direct economic loss from the disaster totalled 843bn yuan. Much of the damage is also impossible to fix with money or mortar.
Li Yan lost her child in a school collapse in Mianzhu city. She has heard that the government will pay 10,000 yuan per person in relief funds, but she says it will not even cover a third of the cost of rebuilding her home.
"We can't rebuild by ourselves without help," she said. "As well as a home, our biggest need is justice for my dead child, but I know that is something that nobody can help us with."
[news] China detains teacher for earthquake photos
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· Questions about collapsed schools on internet
· Man held in labour camp for 're-education'
A teacher who posted photographs on the internet of schools which collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake has been sent to a labour camp for a year, a rights group said yesterday.
Liu Shaokun was ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour", according to Human Rights in China. The system does not require a charge or criminal trial and is not subject to court appeals. He is believed to be the third person held after questioning why so many schools were destroyed in the earthquake.
Scores of schools across the southwestern province collapsed following the 7.9 magnitude shock. In many cases, buildings around them remained intact, prompting questions about the quality of their construction. The authorities initially responded to public outrage by promising an inquiry into whether shoddy building work was linked to corruption.
But they have subsequently silenced critics, ordering state media to avoid the subject and preventing parents from protesting. In recent weeks police have dragged grieving relatives away from demonstrations in some areas. Families have also been pressed to take compensation in exchange for signing contracts which include commitments not to protest or attempt to sue the authorities.
"Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labour to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.
The group said that Liu, a teacher at Guanghan middle school in Deyang city, was detained on June 25 for "disseminating rumours and destroying social order." His wife, who has not been allowed to see him, was told last week that he had been sent to a labour camp. He had travelled through the quake zone taking pictures of the ruins of schools and circulating them on the internet, along with criticism.
The public security bureau in Deyang told the Guardian it was trying to find out more about the matter and the Guanghan city propaganda department said it had not heard of the case.
But an official with the general office of the Guanghan school where Liu worked told Reuters: "He was detained late last month by people from national security bureau for deliberately inciting families of victims to petition and disseminating anti-government rumours. They searched his home and found evidence."
The family of Huang Qi, a longstanding rights activist from Sichuan, said this month that he had been formally arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets" after helping bereaved parents and posting articles about structural failings of schools on his website.
China's human rights record and lack of political freedom are under increasing scrutiny with the Olympic games only days away. Yesterday a senior official from the International Olympic Committee admitted that colleagues had cut a deal to let Beijing block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access.
Yesterday journalists at the main press centre were unable to access sensitive sites, including that of Amnesty International, which this week released a highly critical report on human rights in China.
[news] Chinese teacher sent to labour camp for earthquake photos
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A Chinese teacher has been sent to a labour camp over his internet photographs of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group said today.
Liu Shaokun was ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour", according to Human Rights in China. The system does not require a formal charge or criminal trial and there is no appeal.
He is believed to be the third person held after posting material questioning why so many schools were destroyed in the May 12 earthquake, in which around 70,000 people died.
Scores of schools across the south-western province collapsed following the 7.9 magnitude shock. In many cases, other buildings around them remained intact, prompting questions about the quality of their construction.
The authorities initially responded to a wave of public outrage by promising an inquiry into whether shoddy building work was linked to corruption.
But they have subsequently silenced critics, ordering the state media not
to report on the subject and preventing parents from protesting.
In recent weeks, police have dragged grieving relatives away from demonstrations in some areas. Families have been pressed to sign contracts granting them compensation, which include commitments not to protest or attempts to sue the authorities.
"Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and
dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education
through labour to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu
Shaokun and others," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.
The group said that Liu, a teacher at Guanghan middle School in Deyang City, was detained on June 25 for "disseminating rumours and destroying social order". His wife, who has not been allowed to see him, was told last week that he had been sent to a labour camp.
He had travelled through the quake zone taking pictures of the ruins of
schools and circulating them on the internet, along with criticism of
shoddy building work.
The public security bureau in Deyang told the Guardian it was trying to
find out more about the matter and the propaganda department of the
Guanghan City people's government said it had not heard of the case.
But an official with the general office of the Guanghan school where Liu
worked told Reuters: "He was detained late last month by people from
national security bureau for deliberately inciting families of victims to
petition and disseminating anti-government rumours. They searched his home and found evidence."
China uses the labour camps to detain suspects for up to four years. Critics say it is unfair and is used to detain political
and religious activists.
The family of Huang Qi, a long-standing human rights activist from Sichuan, said this month that he had been formally arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets" after helping bereaved parents and posting articles about structural failings of schools on his website.
His wife, Zeng Li, told reporters he had not been allowed to see a lawyer or relatives since his detention on June 10.
One of his articles was about the detention of Zeng Hongling, a former
academic detained on subversion charges after she posted online essays attacking shoddy construction, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
[news] Chinese officials sacked over handling of earthquake
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China today said 12 officials have been sacked for dereliction of duty in response to last month's earthquake that killed more than 69,000 people.
The supervision minister, Ma Wen, said her department had received 1,178 complaints involving officials' responses to the May 12 quake and had dealt with more than 1,000 of them.
"Administrative punishments" had been handed out to 43 officials, the most serious being removal from office, Ma told a news conference on Monday.
Ma repeated promises to investigate possible corruption in the building of schools, large numbers of which collapsed in the quake. Parents have been demanding to know whether poorly built schools were vulnerable to the earthquake. Thousands of schoolchildren were among the people who died after the massive May earthquake.
She said those found to have violated laws and regulations would be punished, but gave no deadline for the completion of the investigation.
The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, yesterday said life in north-western China's Shaanxi and Gansu provinces should return to normal in two months, and reconstruction should be completed by 2010.
Wen said reconstruction in Shaanxi and Gansu should focus on repairing and rebuilding damaged housing in rural areas. More than 1.4m homes in the two provinces were flattened by the quake, affecting millions of local farmers.
The new buildings should be safe, economical, and take up less land, with safety as the top concern, Wen said, adding that schools, hospitals, and other public buildings must meet the highest safety standards.
According to official figures, 69,172 died during or after last month's earthquake, the most powerful to hit China in decades, 374,159 were injured and 17,420 are missing.
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