Still no official toll of students killed in quake
Ten months after Sichuan disaster, authorities refuse to give estimate
Shi Jiangtao in Beijing 9 March 2009
Nearly 10 months after the devastating magnitude 8 earthquake, Sichuan authorities say they are still not ready to release figures on how many students were killed.
Tens of thousands of students are thought to have died when their school buildings collapsed in the May 12 disaster, which killed nearly 88,000 people.
Despite repeated appeals from grieving parents of the children and the mainland public, the government has stubbornly refused to give an estimate of the student death toll.
Executive vice-governor Wei Hong said yesterday that the casualty figures for students would come out only when the final death-toll calculation was done.
“It’s a very complicated process to verify the final toll and we need to conduct a series of calculations and checks, especially of the locations and basic information on those dead and missing,” he said on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
“With the exact number of total quake victims still uncertain, it is very hard to give an exact number of student victims.”
Analysts questioned the authorities’ refusal to publish the key information about the earthquake, saying the government contradicted itself by revealing the exact number of schools and even classrooms affected by the quake.
Mr. Wei said 9,145 schools in some 140 counties were damaged by the quake and needed to be rebuilt.
But he backed away from an early official investigation last year which partly confirmed widespread allegations that poorly built schools contributed to the students’ deaths.
“The scale of the earthquake was very big and it was very strong, and that was the key and most important reason schools and some other buildings were damaged,” he said, citing a study sponsored by the provincial government.
But a national expert committee on the quake concluded in September that shoddy construction, including substandard materials and poor school design, were partly to blame for the heavy student death toll.
There have been repeated accusations by parents and activists about so-called tofu school buildings and corruption behind the tragedy, but government officials have dodged questions on the responsibility of local officials.
“We fully understand the feelings of those parents who lost their children and tried to make their cases heard and we will try our best to help them,” Mr. Wei said.
However, there have been reports that parents were harassed, intimidated and barred from staging protests, especially on sensitive holidays and anniversaries.
Mr. Wei also confirmed a report that authorities in Beichuan county, one of the areas hit the worst by the quake, had “improperly” used government funds to buy luxury SUVs, claims of which first surfaced on the internet.
He said officials responsible for the deal were reprimanded, but denied allegations that the money spent on expensive cars was from disaster relief funds.
He promised to step up supervision of the spending of relief funds and donations, but gave little detail as to how this could be done.
Appearing nervous when pressed on questions such as earthquake statistics and Tibet, Mr. Wei insisted that people should always trust what the government said.
He said the situation in Tibetan areas of Aba and Ganzi prefectures in western Sichuan was “stable and under control”, despite reports about heightened security and monk-led protests.
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Still no official toll of students killed in quake
Ten months after Sichuan disaster, authorities refuse to give estimate
Shi Jiangtao in Beijing
9 March 2009
Nearly 10 months after the devastating magnitude 8 earthquake, Sichuan authorities say they are still not ready to release figures on how many students were killed.
Tens of thousands of students are thought to have died when their school buildings collapsed in the May 12 disaster, which killed nearly 88,000 people.
Despite repeated appeals from grieving parents of the children and the mainland public, the government has stubbornly refused to give an estimate of the student death toll.
Executive vice-governor Wei Hong said yesterday that the casualty figures for students would come out only when the final death-toll calculation was done.
“It’s a very complicated process to verify the final toll and we need to conduct a series of calculations and checks, especially of the locations and basic information on those dead and missing,” he said on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
“With the exact number of total quake victims still uncertain, it is very hard to give an exact number of student victims.”
Analysts questioned the authorities’ refusal to publish the key information about the earthquake, saying the government contradicted itself by revealing the exact number of schools and even classrooms affected by the quake.
Mr. Wei said 9,145 schools in some 140 counties were damaged by the quake and needed to be rebuilt.
But he backed away from an early official investigation last year which partly confirmed widespread allegations that poorly built schools contributed to the students’ deaths.
“The scale of the earthquake was very big and it was very strong, and that was the key and most important reason schools and some other buildings were damaged,” he said, citing a study sponsored by the provincial government.
But a national expert committee on the quake concluded in September that shoddy construction, including substandard materials and poor school design, were partly to blame for the heavy student death toll.
There have been repeated accusations by parents and activists about so-called tofu school buildings and corruption behind the tragedy, but government officials have dodged questions on the responsibility of local officials.
“We fully understand the feelings of those parents who lost their children and tried to make their cases heard and we will try our best to help them,” Mr. Wei said.
However, there have been reports that parents were harassed, intimidated and barred from staging protests, especially on sensitive holidays and anniversaries.
Mr. Wei also confirmed a report that authorities in Beichuan county, one of the areas hit the worst by the quake, had “improperly” used government funds to buy luxury SUVs, claims of which first surfaced on the internet.
He said officials responsible for the deal were reprimanded, but denied allegations that the money spent on expensive cars was from disaster relief funds.
He promised to step up supervision of the spending of relief funds and donations, but gave little detail as to how this could be done.
Appearing nervous when pressed on questions such as earthquake statistics and Tibet, Mr. Wei insisted that people should always trust what the government said.
He said the situation in Tibetan areas of Aba and Ganzi prefectures in western Sichuan was “stable and under control”, despite reports about heightened security and monk-led protests.
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