Beijing AsiaNews/Agencies) – Dozens of families who lost children in the 12 May 2008 Sichuan earthquake will take part in a sit-in and go on a hunger strike to protest against the provincial government’s unwillingness to investigate why so many schools collapsed.
Some parents said that they will stand in silent protest as President Hu Jintao and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon take part in a ceremony commemorating the deaths of 1,400 high school students in the city of Beichuan.
According to official figures, some 5,335 students were killed (other sources put the actual number at more than 7,000) under the rubble of their schools as if they had been built with tofu whilst adjacent buildings withstood the quake.
Provincial authorities reassured the public right after the event, saying that investigations would quickly follow, only to reject demands by parents to know how schools were built.
Recently provincial construction director Yang Hongbo said there was limited evidence of poor construction.
However, the authorities insisted that the power of the quake was to blame for the scale of human losses, this despite the fact that China’s National Audit Office determined that schools were forced to operate on 55 per cent of their budget with the rest embezzled.
Parents are warning that they are not going to give up or accept compromises. Many of them lost their only child and are now set to dedicate the rest of their life to justice.
“I feel I have no future, nothing,” said Lin Changhen who lost her only daughter.
For her the 60,000 yuan the government gave her in compensation is “dirty.”
“We don't necessarily want compensation or trials, but we want a fair, just answer,” said Zheng Chenglong, whose son Zheng Jiajie died in a collapsed school.
By contrast, the government is more interested in helping the local economy recover in an area the size of Germany with a population of 87 million people, and this despite the huge damages inflicted by the quake: 3,340 schools damaged or destroyed, more than 300 kilometres of highways and 1,700 kilometres of local roads in need of repair.
Following the quake the government invested heavily in reconstruction. Despite five million homeless people, public money raised the local GDP by 9.5 per cent over the previous year. In the third quarter of 2008 the provincial economy actually grew by 10.1 per cent.
However, many businesses in the petrochemical, machinery, electricity and food industries are still reeling from the impact of the quake, so are many residents, still feeling the effects of huge human losses.
