A Chinese activist who questioned why so many schoolchildren died in last year’s massive earthquake has been charged with subversion and will stand trial in the middle of this month, his lawyer said yesterday.
Tan Zuoren’s (譚作人) trial is to begin on Aug. 12 in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, where a devastating earthquake last year left nearly 90,000 dead or missing, said lawyer Pu Zhi-qiang (蒲志強) of Beijing’s Huayi Law Firm.
Tan is accused of inciting to subvert state power, but it was not immediately clear what evidence will be brought against him, Pu said by telephone from Chengdu.
Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents for years.
COLLAPSE
Following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, Tan tried to investigate the collapse of school buildings in the quake and the number of schoolchildren killed, estimating at least 5,600 students were victims.
Tan had hoped to complete his investigation before the May 12 anniversary of the quake, but he was detained in late March, Hong Kong-based activist network Chinese Human Rights Defenders said earlier.
In May, the government finally released its own count of students killed in the disaster, putting the official toll at 5,335.
Critics allege that corruption-enabled shoddy construction caused several schools to collapse while buildings nearby remained intact — a politically sensitive theory that the government has tried to quash.
FORCE
Officials blame the sheer force of the quake as the main cause of the number of flattened schools.
Pu said the charges appear to be linked to Tan’s quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS