Media Banned From Quake School

By RADIO FREE ASIA
June 06, 2008

Parents across southwestern China are struggling to hold local officials accountable for allegedly shoddy construction standards in school buildings that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake.

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have prevented journalists from gaining access to a school that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake, amid widespread calls for investigations into the quality of school buildings.

The Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureau has 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 Public Security Bureau ordered all media to leave Juyuan Middle School alone," an official at the Dujiangyan Disaster Relief Information Center said.

She said police had cordoned off the area. "Some parents are very emotionally disturbed 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 journalists away from the school, grieving parents at the site said.

"The school site has been sealed off. No media are allowed," a woman surnamed Dong who lost a child in the collapse of the school said. "More than 100 police are present at the scene. Today, Australian journalists were expelled from the school site," she added.

Lawyers hard to find

She said local officials had pledged to give each victim's family 32,000 yuan (U.S. $4,600) in comfort money--higher than the standard 5,000 yuan compensation for other quake victims.

Dong said some parents had already received 12,000 yuan. "The government has pledged to take care of our health care and retirement, but it never said anything about seeking justice for our innocent children," she said.

She said the parents had hoped to band together and find a lawyer to sue the government for negligence, but so far no lawyer had been willing to take it on in 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 government defines the nature of the school buildings. If they say it was shoddy construction, then it was shoddy construction, but if they say it wasn't then it wasn't."

"If the court takes the case, it is like government suing itself. Therefore that's unlikely to happen. We don't want to withdraw our case by simply taking the 32,000 yuan from the government. We are hoping that a volunteer lawyer may take our case."

The story is being repeated in cities, towns, and villages around the quake-hit zone, where 10,000 schoolchildren are believed to have died in collapsed school buildings when the 7.9 magnitude tremor hit.

Call for investigation

In Shifang city, more than 200 parents called on the municipal government to publish a conclusion about safety standards in the collapsed school buildings.

"We want the government to tell us whether it was the earthquake or man-made factors that brought down the school buildings," grieving parent Wang Zhenfu said. "The township government told us that experts would come to investigate on 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 issue as long as they can."

>> Read complete report