Drainage of mineshafts is slow, only tomorrow will other pumps be up and running. Meanwhile authorities are efficient in denying news to relatives and press. Some families claim that the river banks were already broken when miners descended. Political repercussions in Beijing.

Beijing  (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Efforts to rescue the 181 miners trapped beneath 12 million cubic metres of water in the two coal mines in Xintai (Shandong) are limping along. The authorities are taken up with avoiding any form of unofficial information on the event, while families now are beginning to claim that the miners “were murdered”.

In the Huayuan mine yesterday as pumps drained just 2 or 3 metres of the hundreds of metres of floodwater between the miners and daylight. Five pumps worked to drain water yesterday but another five to seven pumps would not be ready to work until tomorrow, a week after the disaster. The slow pace of operations has infuriated the families, already exasperated by the authorities systematic refusal to give them any precise information.  Instead the authorities have delivered to food and fruit and some money to many of the relatives.

Wang Dongjiang , whose younger brother, Wang Dongshen, is trapped in the mine, has been at the gate every day but has yet to get an update.  Many were  angered by a bright red banner hanging over the south gate that said, "Heaven is merciless, but we love you and the Communist Party loves you most”.

Li Mingzhen, sister in law of another lost miner told the South China Morning Post that a briefing paper was sent to her home regarding the progress in the rescue effort but she didn’t read it, ‘ because its aimed at the media and the central government and not us, the only ones who are suffering”. She wants to prove that when the miners were sent down into the mine the Wen River had already broken its banks, that is why “these miners were murdered” by the mine officials.

Yet these same officials were highly efficient in checking the papers of journalists present, and in warning them not to interview families, but to only give official information. Many relatives refuse to speak out in fear of the ‘consequences’.  Dozens of private security guards hold vigil over the entrance gates.

Many observers note that the recovery of the lost miners was impossible from the out set and that the authorities raised a barrier of disinformation doping that time would calm the anger of the relations and the publics attention.

But the disaster in Beijing has also had political consequences in Beijing, in view of the Communist Party’s National Congress due in Autumn, after years of leaders promises to guarantee safety in the mines.  In 2007 a series of deadly accidents has shown that the initiatives have so far been insufficient, and that these accidents have generated further social unrest.

 

• CHINA
• MINES
• SECURITY
• BEIJING
• FAMILIES
• FLOOD
• RESCUE
• EFFORTS