Three months on, unanswered questions for quake parents
Posted: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 3:14 AM
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Beijing, China
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| By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent |
SICHUAN, China – It is easy to be seduced by the glitz of the new Beijing, the modern face and the charm offensive turned on for the Olympic Games. But travel 1,300 miles south west of Beijing, and a tragedy is being played out that shows how little some things have changed.
A week before the Olympics opened I travelled to Sichuan province with a Nightly News team, to revisit parents who had lost a child in the May 12 earthquake. It was my third visit there since the quake, which killed 70,000 people.
It was the deaths of so many children, an estimated 10,000 of them buried under the rubble of their schools, that had triggered scenes of raw grief in the days that followed, as devastated parents searched for their missing child. Their anguish so acute because for most this was the only child they were allowed under China's one child policy.
In the weeks that followed, anguish turned to anger, as parents demanded to know whether shoddy construction was to blame for the collapse of 7,000 classrooms. As I discovered this month, they are still waiting for answers.
As soon as we arrived in Mianzhu we were surrounded by police, demanding to see our documents. "The story's over," they told us, before ordering us to leave, escorting us out past the Fuxian No. 2 Primary School, where 127 children died. The police had sealed the school entrances with ugly gray walls, and painted slogans beside the gate – "Be grateful to the Communist Party."
The story isn't over, though the authorities clearly wish it were; and gratitude towards the communist party is not something widely shared among parents, whom the authorities are now trying to silence - urging them to put the quake behind them and move on.
‘They disappeared in one moment’
When we first visited Fuxian school soon after the quake, parents had turned the rubble into a shrine covered with scores of photographs of the children. The police have ordered the photographs removed and, as with schools across the quake zone, the authorities were clearing the debris - and with it, parents feared, any evidence of possible shoddy construction.
It was at Fuxian school that we'd first met Sang Min, standing in silent grief, cradling a photograph of her eleven year old son Feng Junwei, who died under the wreckage of his school. She still keeps his photographs close to her.
"Every time when I miss him, I take his photograph out and talk to him. I know he can't hear, but it makes me feel better," she told me during our most recent visit.
Also at Fuxian, we'd met Yuan Changhui, whose 12-year-old daughter also died. She'd dreamed of being a doctor.
"It took us so many years to bring up our children," she told me. "They disappeared in one moment."
Sign here…
Yuan Changhua also lost her husband, a mineworker, who was buried underground when the mine collapsed during the quake.
The authorities have offered parents compensation - 60,000 Yuan, which is almost $9,000, a lot of money here, but there's a catch: they have to sign an agreement not to protest.
We saw a copy. It reads: "From now on, under the leadership of the party and the government, we will obey the law and maintain social order."
It goes on: "We sincerely appreciate the help and care from the party, government and party."
Both Sang Min and Yuan Changhui have signed. They felt they had no choice.
"They said we had to sign it," Yuan Changhui told me. "What else could we do." Shaking her head, and wiping away tears she said it was "impossible" parents would ever learn the truth about the schools.
At the same time, the authorities have moved to silence local bloggers, who have catalogued the damage to schools, and suggested local corruption may have resulted in corners being cut on construction. One, a school caretaker named Liu Shaokun, travelled the region posting photographs of collapsed schools. He has been arrested and sentenced to one year re-education through labor.
"He's just a volunteer in the quake zone. How much influence does he have?" his wife told me.
Closure
The government has told parents they are allowed to have another child, though most we spoke to said it was much too early to decide.
The last we saw of Sang Min, she was boarding a train from Sichuan for a factory job in southern China. She could no longer wait for answers, and needed an income. The shock that turned to anger had now given way to exhaustion and emptiness.
It's unlikely, though, that the closure officials are demanding of parents will come by government edict.
On Tuesday - the three-month anniversary of the quake - all eyes were on the incredible spectacle of the Beijing Olympics, a world away from the grieving parents of Sichuan.
