Shanghai yesterday said that it was canceling its famed Lunar New Year lantern festival in the wake of a New Year’s Day stampede that left 36 revelers dead.
The announcement illustrates the spreading effects of the Jan. 1 disaster, in which surging crowds trampled people along the city’s legendary Bund riverfront walkway.
Events as far away as in Beijing have been canceled, amid tightened security in subway stations and other crowded public spaces.
YUYUAN GARDEN
The planned three-day festival in Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, a warren of narrow alleys and ancient buildings in the heart of the ancient walled Chinese city, drew more than 1.3 million people in 2013.
The lantern festival comes on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and marks the close of annual festivities.
The celebrations typically draw massive — and sometimes unruly — crowds.
In 2004, 37 people were killed in a stampede in the Beijing suburb of Miyun.
The company that runs the Yuyuan Garden and the Shanghai municipal government said in separate statements that the event was being canceled out of “safety concerns.”
FEARS OF OUTRAGE
Neither directly mentioned the New Year stampede, highlighting official worries over continuing public outrage over security lapses and a lack of government explanations.
Authorities allowed only one day of tightly controlled public mourning at the site, which has since been fenced-off under the pretext of making aesthetic improvements.
Some family members of victims and others have reported being followed and harassed by security personnel, reflecting a typical tactic by Chinese authorities who tolerate little criticism and fear any chance of unrest coalescing around sympathy for those killed.
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