China said yesterday that last year’s massive Sichuan earthquake left 5,335 students dead or missing, releasing its first official tally days before the sensitive anniversary of the disaster.
The announcement came as authorities in the southwestern province accused foreign reporters of inciting survivors of the May 12 disaster to demonstrate, amid reports that journalists have been harassed, detained or beaten.
The 8.0-magnitude earthquake left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, injured 375,000 and left more than 5 million homeless, the government has said.
DELAYED TALLY
Tu Wentao (涂文濤), head of the Sichuan education department, attributed the year-long delay in releasing the tally of dead or missing students to the need to compile figures from various government agencies.
“These numbers were reached through legal methods. We have wide agreement on these numbers,” Tu told a press conference in the provincial capital Chengdu, speaking as part of government efforts to mark Tuesday’s anniversary.
The quake left another 546 students disabled, the data indicated, which did not include any deaths in surrounding provinces.
The number of children killed in the quake is highly sensitive because many bereaved parents say school buildings were shoddily constructed, causing them to collapse when the quake struck while adjacent structures stood firm.
State media has said previously that 14,000 schools suffered damage in the quake — half of them collapsed entirely — while early estimates of the numbers of students and teachers killed were put at around 9,000.
The schools issue is perhaps the most sensitive aspect of the disaster for the government, whose propaganda machine had otherwise seized on the quake as an example of the country overcoming adversity under Chinese Communist Party leadership.
Angry parents of dead children staged a number of protests following the quake, alleging that corruption resulted in shoddy construction.
CLAMPDOWN
Rights groups have heavily criticized Beijing for a subsequent clampdown on the subject, which has included sealing off school ruins, barring media coverage of the subject and jailing activists investigating the issue.
Yesterday, a Chinese official accused Western reporters of encouraging survivors to speak out against the government.
“A very few journalists are not going to the disaster area to report, but are inciting the crowds, asking people to organize,” Hou Xiongfei (侯雄飛), vice head of Sichuan’s provincial propaganda department, told reporters in Chengdu.
“We do not welcome these kinds of people and ... will handle them in accordance with the law,” he said, without giving specific examples.
JOURNALISTS HARASSED
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China on Wednesday urged reporters to be cautious in quake-hit areas, saying it had received reports of three cases in which foreign journalists were shoved, punched or otherwise harassed.
“Given the violence of the encounters and an apparent increasing frequency of reports, it seems the situation is becoming more volatile and we advise extra caution when visiting these areas,” the group said in a statement.
The government has required foreign journalists to register with local authorities if they want to report on the anniversary.
Human Rights Watch released a statement on Wednesday calling for China to open up about the quake, compensate victims’ relatives and allow parents to file lawsuits.
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