Amnesty says China quake survivors face intimidation,
detention
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) - Survivors of China's devastating earthquake
last year face detention and harassment if they protest over
collapsed schools, corruption claims and other grievances, Amnesty
International said.
While Beijing is pouring billions of dollars into rebuilding
towns in south-western Sichuan province flattened by the May 12
quake, the government also has waged a less public campaign against
citizens who blame more than natural destruction for the many
schools that collapsed, killing thousands of children, the human
rights advocacy group said.
"By unlawfully locking up parents of children who died, the
government is creating more misery for people who have said in some
cases they lost everything in the Sichuan earthquake," said Roseann
Rife of Amnesty in a statement emailed with the report released on
Monday.
In the week before the anniversary of the quake, which killed
around 80,000 people, the contention between state authorities and
discontented survivors described by Amnesty could intensify.
On the weekend, several grieving parents of Juyuan, where a high
school building toppled in the quake, told Reuters their plans to
mourn their dead children were stopped by police.
"The police and town officials told us that we should not make
such a fuss," said one of the parents, Yang Rengui, whose son died
in the school. "Now many parents dare not speak."
Ahead of the anniversary, official media is praising the
rebuilding effort and acts of selfless sacrifice.
But the Amnesty report highlights the tensions the quake left,
pitting a one-party government that prizes control against people
convinced neglect and graft made schools vulnerable and has
tarnished rebuilding efforts.
Many of the tools of control Chinese authorities have honed to
guard stability have been applied with particular intensity in
quake-hit areas of Sichuan, Amnesty said.
Parents demanding inquiries into claims that corruption and lax
quality-control weakened schools that toppled in the quake had been
detained in "black jails" -- informal detention rooms in hotels and
offices, Amnesty said.
Chinese lawyers and human rights activists who have offered help
to grieving families had been intimidated and detained, and their
efforts to bring cases to court stymied, the report said.
Rife said Amnesty had no firm estimates of numbers of detentions
of parents and protesters.
"But we assume we're only hearing about a small number of the
abuses," she said from Hong Kong.
An official in the Sichuan government propaganda office said she
had not seen the Amnesty report but rejected its claims.
"This group has no right to criticise us," said the official,
who refused to give her name. "China has made many achievements in
reconstruction, so why do they exaggerate and distort
problems?"
(Editing by Nick Macfie)