China’s ruling Communist Party newspaper marked the 15th anniversary of a devastating earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan with a commemorative video on Friday, sparking criticism from bereaved parents who say the causes of the school collapses have never been investigated as promised.
The propaganda video focused on improvements in the lives of survivors over the past decade-and-a-half, while the Global Times reported on improvements in “disaster prevention” on Friday in a bid to put a positive spin on the 15th anniversary of the devastating Sichuan earthquake that killed more than 80,000 people, more than 5,000 of them children.
“It’s because so many people refused to give up, that we had so much motivation and energy [to rebuild our lives],” the voice-over says, accompanied by inspiring tales of amputees who have made a success of their lives despite losing limbs in the rubble.
“So many people are still seeing a fresh start in life, like rays of sunlight shining through the cracks, or seeds sprouting afresh,” it says.
But parents whose children died due to substandard construction in school buildings said they are still silenced, detained and harassed if they continue to call for an investigation that was promised into the deaths of 5,000 children, which their families largely blame on rampant official corruption.
Forgotten the dead
Sang Jun, whose son died in the Fuxin No. 2 Elementary School in Sichuan’s Mianzhu city, said the government has treated the living well, but appears to have forgotten the dead.
“They have forgotten about the victims, and they still haven’t investigated [why it happened],” he said. “There is nowhere we’re allowed to mourn them now — we’re not allowed to go to the scene [of the collapsed buildings].”
Many still call for a government response through official complaints channels, yet are harassed and detained when they do so, according to Zhou Xingrong, a bereaved parent from Sichan’s Dujiangyan city who has lodged more than 100 complaints with central government in Beijing over the loss of her son.
“When we got to Beijing … a bunch of four or five burly men with Beijing and Hebei accents grabbed us and forced us into a vehicle, took our backpacks … our mobile phones and ID cards,” Zhou said of a recent petitioning trip in February. “They wouldn’t let me speak and threatened to tape up my mouth.”
“Then a few people from the Juyuan township of Dujiangyan came and they took us on the bus straight to Shijiazhuang and then bought tickets for the high-speed railway back to Dujiangyan,” she said. “When I got back, there was no explanation, and my personal freedom was restricted, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the house.”
“Tofu buildings”
The authorities’ treatment of victims had been unjust, she said.
“They promised to pursue those responsible back then, but nothing has been done for 15 years,” Zhou said. “No-one is being held accountable for the tofu buildings,” a reference to buildings believed to have been built shoddily and with leftover materials, similar to the dregs left over from the tofu-making process.
“They acted illegally and won’t answer up to the injury done to me and my family,” she said. “The past 15 years have been so difficult.”
“Back then, [then premier] Wen Jiabao said he would investigate illegal construction methods, and told us to go home and wait for news,” Sang said.
“Fifteen years and three premiers later … none of them has even mentioned the Sichuan earthquake, not one of them this whole time.”
“I have also been to Beijing [to complain] but they tell us to deal with it back in our local area, so now we have to give up, because trying to stand up for your rights is too hard,” Sang said.
Afraid of backlash
He said he has given up in part to avoid any backlash against his second son, born after the disaster.
“My other kid is very good at reading, and it will affect their ability to find a job in future if I go against [the government],” he said. “They always settle accounts, up to three generations later.”
“I would like to stand up for my rights, but I’m afraid of the backlash.”
Lu Biyu said it is particularly hard for bereaved families to get closure because the government places restrictions on public mourning for their lost children.
“The police and government set guards at the scene [of the disaster] every year, and they don’t want to let us go there [to make offerings to the dead],” Lu said.
“I would feel better if I could sit with my baby for an hour or two in that place, especially after so many years of unsuccessful petitioning,” she said.
“The day of the earthquake was the most painful of my life. It’s still all there, in my mind,” Lu said. “It’s as if it happened yesterday, that feeling of rigidity when I hugged his body.”
“I kept thinking, why couldn’t it have been me? He died before he had experienced anything, so I can’t let him go,” she said, adding that only the classroom block collapsed in her home district of Juyuan, leaving all of the private houses around standing.
“If it hadn’t been a tofu building, then all of those children wouldn’t have wrongfully died,” Lu said.
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