2015-05-12
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A memorial wreath among the rubble of Juyuan Middle School’s collapsed classrooms in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, May 20, 2008.
AFP
Hundreds of parents of children who died in collapsed school buildings in the massive 2008 Sichuan earthquake gathered to lay wreaths on Tuesday’s seventh anniversary of the disaster, which killed more than 80,000 people, thousands of them schoolchildren.
Watched closely by plainclothes police, around 200 parents gathered on May 12 at the former site of the Juyuan High School in Sichuan’s Dujiangyan city to pay their respects, participants told RFA.
“We are still at the scene, and there are quite a lot of people here today, maybe one or two hundred,” bereaved Juyuan parent Zhou Xingrong said.
“We are burning paper money [for the souls of the dead] and setting off firecrackers [to ward off evil spirits],” Zhou said.
“We are using small white flowers as a mourning tribute for our children, and we are getting ready to play some funeral music for the kids,” Zhou said.
“We will be carrying out mourning activities for the whole day.”
Scene ‘more peaceful’
Activists said the scene was more peaceful than in previous years, when police clashed with bereaved parents, dragging them away from similar sites.
“Today, more than 200 people have gathered at the old site of the Juyuan High School to lay wreaths,” quake victim Wu Xianjie, one of millions made homeless in the earthquake, said.
“This is the first time in seven years that the police haven’t interfered with the laying of wreaths, and we let off a few firecrackers.”
“We were evictees from the temporary emergency housing, and we got to know the parents through petitioning [for new homes],” Wu said.
Wu said journalists had also arrived at the site.
“They are interfering with them, though,” he said. “They won’t let them take photos or shoot video, and they have told them to leave.”
The official death toll for the Juyuan High School alone was more than 200, although parents say that closer to 500 people died when the school buildings collapsed.
Call to investigate
Bereaved parents have repeatedly called on Beijing for a full investigation into the deaths of at least 5,300 schoolchildren in the worst-hit areas, blaming local corruption for substandard construction standards in the region’s school buildings.
Quake victims—who include parents who lost schoolchildren and those forcibly evicted from their homes in the name of post-quake reconstruction—say they have been harassed, beaten, and detained in their fight to be heard.
Wu said many people in the worst-hit regions of Sichuan are still living in temporary emergency structures.
“My sister Wu Xianqiong is still living in an earthquake hut,” Wu said. “We tried to petition in Beijing during the parliamentary meeting [in March], and the officials told us they would sort it out within a month.”
“But we still haven’t heard anything,” Wu said.
