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Newspaper says Chinese covered up stadium deaths

Chinese authorities have covered up the deaths of at least 10 workers in their rush to finish the Olympic Stadium for the Games that get under way on Aug. 8, according to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.

The weekly claims that Chinese officials have effectively bought off the families of the dead workers by paying them unusually high amounts of compensation money.

According to the report, the major problem has been down to the scale and ambition of the project.

This has entailed construction workers laboring away on vertiginous heights to put together a stadium that will eventually form a bowl shaped like a bird's nest.

fatalities

"Sadly, fatalities during construction could be due to many different things that have nothing to do with design," Arup, the British engineering firm engaged in the project, told the paper.

Among several unnamed witnesses to the deaths, the Sunday Times cited a 25-year-old construction worker from Gansu Province who worked as a welder at the site for more than a year.

"One day towards the end of [2006], the weather was terribly cold. On the top of the `bird's nest' I could see some ice. I stood on the ground, thinking of how best to climb to the top to get on with the welding," he said.

"Just at that moment I heard a terrible scream. Before I realized what had happened I heard a thump on the ground. I suddenly realized that someone had fallen from the top of the nest -- yet I couldn't see anybody on our sandpile, which was heaped in the middle of the running track," he said.

Gory

"The manager ordered workers to excavate the sand with shovels. After half an hour a dead body was pulled out of the heap. The body was gory and I didn't dare look at it," he said.

"The body was taken away immediately and everyone on the spot was told to keep it secret. For a couple of nights after that I had nightmares. In the end I quit and went back to my home town," the man said.

"So why did I come back again? Because I couldn't find a better job. And I guess because my girlfriend broke up with me. I felt lost. So I came back here to forget my unhappiness through hard work," he said.

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