China Urged to Cancel Quake Trials

By Edward Wong | The New York Times
August 06, 2009

Human rights advocates are calling on the Chinese government to cancel the criminal trials of two men who pushed for official investigations into the causes of widespread school collapses during the devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province.

The trial of one man, Huang Qi, began Wednesday but adjourned without a verdict. Mr. Huang, a well-known blogger and civil rights campaigner, is accused of possessing state secrets, which carries a sentence of five years to life. The second defendant, Tan Zuoren, a writer and also a prominent rights advocate, faces a potential five-year sentence for subversion and is to go on trial Wednesday.

"These trials are not about a reasonable application of the law, but about silencing government critics whose work has considerable public benefit and sympathy," Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, said in a written statement released Tuesday. "The government is likely seeking to squelch those who cause it embarrassment, but in the process it is undermining domestic and international confidence in its ability to cope in a transparent way with natural disasters."

Mr. Huang's wife, Zeng Li, said in a telephone interview that her husband's trial began at 10:30 a.m. and continued for three hours. It was unclear Wednesday night when the trial, closed to the public, would resume.

The May 2008 earthquake was the most devastating natural disaster in China in decades, killing nearly 69,000 people and leaving about 18,000 missing, all presumed dead, according to official estimates. Initial reports from the official news media said about 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed and as many as 10,000 schoolchildren might have died. In May, the government released the first official toll of students killed in the quake, saying 5,335 students were dead or missing.

Many of the schools collapsed even though buildings next to them remained standing, which grieving parents and advocates attributed to shoddy construction and corruption. Officials in Sichuan blamed the earthquake itself, not bad construction.

>> Complete report