Chinese police and soldiers blocked access to schools destroyed by last month’s earthquake yesterday after residents reported angry disturbances by parents of dead children.
The restricted access appeared to reflect growing official anxiety over increasingly public displays of anger by parents of the thousands of children killed by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province.
“This is a bad thing and they don’t want it publicized. They want to keep it a secret. They are getting worried,” one parent surnamed Zhou said.
He said his daughter was one of hundreds buried in Juyuan Middle School near the city of Dujiangyan.
Another father, who lost his daughter, 14-year-old Li Yi, also voiced frustration that he was not able to visit the site of the collapsed school.
“We just want to get our daughter. This is not right. We understand the government is taking steps it needs to take, but it’s still hard for us to accept,” he said.
Parents across the quake-hit region have blamed shoddy construction linked to official corruption for the collapse of schools and have staged rare open protests demanding justice.
In perhaps the most volatile incident so far, a group of about 100 people including grieving parents were forcibly dispersed on Tuesday after staging a demonstration in Dujiangyan, Zhou and other residents said.
Some parents, demanding that someone be held responsible for the school collapses, were physically dragged away by riot police, they said.
“Our children died because of corruption. Everybody knows,” Zhou said. “We want those responsible to be found and punished.”
Dujiangyan residents also said another protest had flared at Xinjian Primary School on Monday. About 400 students and teachers were believed to have died there.
Soldiers and police pushed AFP journalists away from the crushed remains of the Xinjian school yesterday.
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