Police disrupt earthquake demonstration

Chinese police dragged away more than 100 parents today as they were protesting the deaths of their children in poorly constructed schools that collapsed in last month’s earthquake.

The parents, many holding pictures of their dead children, were pulled down the street away from a courthouse in Dujiangyan, a resort city northeast of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

“Why?” some of them yelled. “Tell us something,” they said as black-suited police wearing riot helmets yanked at them.

The parents had been kneeling in front of the courthouse yelling, “We want to sue”.

An AP reporter and two photographers covering the protest were forcibly dragged up the steps into the courthouse by police trying to prevent them from seeing the demonstration.

“The parents were here to give their report to the court,” said one police officer who refused to give his name.

The government says the May 12 earthquake destroyed 7,000 classrooms.

Many parents have accused contractors of cutting corners when building the classrooms, resulting in schools that could not withstand the 7.9-magnitude quake. Pictures of collapsed schools surrounded by buildings still standing have fuelled anger.

More than 270 students died when one high school collapsed in Juyuan, near Dujiangyan.

The Southern Metropolis News quoted a rescuer as saying that rubble from the school showed that no steel reinforcing bars had been used in construction, only iron wire.

The confirmed death toll for China’s worst disaster in three decades was 69,019, and more than 18,000 people are still missing, the government said. The quake also left five million people homeless.