Fearful China 'trying to silence quake parents'

Parents whose children were crushed to death in schools that collapsed in China’s mighty earthquake say they are no longer being allowed to march, wave banners and vent their rage in public.

Officials are now using a variety of tactics – threats, money, promises of justice, or police muscle – to intimidate, appease or hush up grieving mothers and fathers who believe that nearly 7,000 classrooms crumbled so easily because corrupt and incompetent officials did not build them properly.

After winning global praise for acting like an open society and allowing the parents to protest after the disaster, China appears to be reverting to the tactics of a Communist police state ready to crush any dissent.

The town of Wufu became a hotbed of quake protests after the town’s Fuxin No 2 Primary School caved in, killing 127 pupils.

“Police from Deyang came to our town and warned us not to gather,” said Pi Kaijian, a 43-year-old farmer whose 11-year-old son died in the school.

“The police met with our parent leaders and said if we gathered, it would be a criminal act and we’d be arrested.”

In the weeks after the May 12 quake, parents in Wufu vented their rage over buildings they say were shoddily constructed by grabbing pictures of their dead children and marching to the government headquarters in Deyang, the nearest big city.

Such protests were tolerated for a time after the 7.9-magnitude quake, but then came the police warnings to stay off the streets.

A Deyang police spokesman, who would not give his name, doubted Mr Pi’s account. “This probably isn’t true,” he said.

The deputy director of the propaganda office of the Deyang police said he was unaware of the alleged threats.

“We police haven’t been in touch with those parents. We have allowed them to raise their case,” the official, who would only give his surname, Luo, said, before refusing to say more and hanging up the telephone.

The alleged police threats did not scare the parents, Mr Pi said. But they decided to cool their protests after officials promised to wrap up an investigation of the school’s collapse before July 15.

“They said we would be satisfied with the probe’s results, so we decided to be patient and give them some time. But I seriously doubt we’ll be satisfied and we’ll continue protesting,” he said.

Elsewhere in Sichuan’s quake zone, crews were busy clearing away rubble left by the quake that killed nearly 70,000 people and left five million homeless.

Shops were reopening and street markets were bustling as life began returning to normal. Huge developments of temporary homes were springing up in fields covered in a freshly poured layer of concrete.

As they tried to cope with their losses, some parents, poor farmers or workers who obeyed China’s one-child policy, seemed to be driven by a deep sense of nihilism, a feeling they could challenge the government because they had nothing more to lose now that their only child was gone.

Zhou Lekang, a farmer whose 16-year-old son was among 270 others who died when the school collapsed in the town of Juyuan, about 45-minutes from the provincial capital, Chengdu, said what he wanted most was justice.

“Now that I’ve lost my child, I fear nothing,” he said.

China’s leadership is particularly sensitive about the school collapses because they touch a nerve with people across the country and the government fears sympathy for the parents could inspire protests in other parts of China before the Beijing Olympics in August.

Last month, police began blocking the parents from going to the collapsed middle school. Mr Zhou also said the most active parents had become silent.

“All we know is that officials went to talk to them, and after that, they stopped being active. We don’t hear from them anymore,” he said.

It is common for officials to break up a protest group by threatening the leaders or buying them off, but often, China just favours a big show of police force.

In the city of Dujiangyan, police shut down a long section of road in front of the Xinjian Elementary School, where hundreds of children died. Six police were posted on each end, discouraging protesters from coming near and a cluster of officers guarded the school’s main gate.

One parent, who asked not to be named because he feared reprisals, said officials were tapping phones and monitoring the parents’ movements.

“Parents who work for state-owned companies are being kept really busy at work,” he said. “They’re being given a little extra salary and no time to do anything else. Some are being talked to individually. They’re being threatened.”