  |
|
 |
|
|
|
Chinese Police Harass Citizens Protesting Thousands Of Children’s Deaths In Earthquake Bad
Cop News DUJIANGYAN, CHINA - The police surrounded more than 100 parents here Tuesday as the parents protested shoddy school construction that they said had resulted in the deaths of thousands of children during the recent earthquake here. The police dragged away several crying mothers and harassed journalists trying to report on the event, according to witnesses and photos of the protest. The standoff between the parents, many carrying framed photos of their children, and the police officers, dressed in black uniforms, lasted for several hours and ended with the parents walking off feeling both intimidated and frustrated, some of those involved in the protest said. “Because so many police surrounded us, we couldn’t do anything, so we went home,” said one woman identified only as Li. The protest took place outside a five-story courthouse in the center of Dujiangyan and was organized by parents who lost their children in the collapse of the suburban Juyuan Middle School. Most of the school’s 900 students died. The confrontational stand of the police and local government here in this town, the scene of several major school collapses when the earthquake struck May 12, is the strongest sign so far of growing impatience among government officials about public airing of grievances over the school issue. Across the hardest hit areas of Sichuan Province in southwest China, parents have been demanding investigations into why so many schools collapsed while surrounding buildings remained standing. Several Chinese journalists have said in recent days that officials from the central government have told their news organizations not to continue reporting on the issue of schools. The growing number of protests over school collapses has emerged as the greatest challenge to government officials in Sichuan, and the grieving parents have become a potent symbol to many Chinese of the way corruption has victimized ordinary people. In some instances, local officials have begged parents to quiet down and accept financial compensation for their dead children. But a spate of government intimidation and censorship shows that the civic empowerment that flourished after the earthquake could quickly unravel. Calls seeking comment that were made to the courthouse, the petition office and city government headquarters in Dujiangyan went unanswered Tuesday. About 10,000 schoolchildren are estimated to have been killed in the earthquake, whose confirmed death toll rose to more than 69,107 on Tuesday. The government lists 18,230 people as missing. Buildings around the Juyuan Middle School remained largely intact after the earthquake while the school collapsed in a deadly rain of bricks and concrete. Rescue workers and soldiers scoured the rubble for days afterward but few survivors were pulled out. Government intimidation of the parents organizing the protest Tuesday began as early as the previous night, Li said in an interview. Li lost a 14-year-old daughter, Wang Ying, in the Juyuan collapse and agreed to speak on the condition that only her last name be used because of fear of government retribution. Officials in the town of Juyuan visited with seven leaders of the parents Monday night and persuaded six of them not to attend the Tuesday protest, Li said. The visits came after parents carried out a protest earlier that day demanding that Juyuan officials apologize for not pushing rescue workers to keep searching for the bodies of children classified as missing. When the parents who did take part in the protest reached the courthouse, they were confronted by the police in black uniforms. Four or five reporters who were on the scene were taken by police into the courthouse against their will, according to Li and a first-hand account by an Associated Press reporter. “There were so many police,” Li said. “They surrounded the parents.” Huang Yuanxi contributed research in Dujiangyan.
|
||||
