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China quake ruins cleared, but school anger unbowed
Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:10pm EST
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By Simon Rabinovitch
JUYUAN, China (Reuters) - The morning before China's vast earthquake killed Kang Ergui's son, the father worked as a security guard at the boy's school.
Now seven months on, Kang is among the grieving parents who -- harassed, silenced, and sometimes arrested -- keep defiant vigil over memories and questions the government would rather leave untouched in the disappearing rubble.
The May 12 quake rocked China's southwest, killing more than 80,000 people, toppling towns and villages, and turning schools to rubble even in areas otherwise spared the worst carnage.
The Chinese government has embarked on a massive, frenzied reconstruction drive that spares no time for the doubts that torture families of the children killed.
The parents say there is less room than ever for their suggestion that incompetence or corruption led to the building of shoddy schools that crumbled all to easily.
"The Communist Party and central policies are good. Things change at the local level," said Kang, an oversized jacket draped on his slight frame. "They don't allow us to be interviewed. The police send people to monitor us, to have us re-educated."
A mild-mannered man, Kang would have been a quiet, pliant citizen in normal times, blending into the background. The quake has changed that.
The school where his only son, 16-year-old Yang Bo, was crushed to death along with about 300 other students has reopened nearby, but Kang said his contract as a guard, which ran until 2009, was scrapped because of his stubborn demand for answers.
A cold wind blows across gravel and weeds where his son's school once stood on the edge of Juyuan, a semi-rural town 50 km (31 miles) from the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu. The neighborhood resembles a gap-toothed mouth, intact apartments and shops ringing the bulldozed ground.
LONELY BATTLE
The quake parents' accusations of corruption and mismanagement behind the students' deaths initially struck a deep chord in China, a society where family-planning restrictions make single children the focus of immense hopes and love.
But reports about school collapses have long since disappeared from Chinese media, blocked by official orders, and the government message is now about rebuilding and moving on.
Those who are unwilling to forget are fighting an increasingly dangerous and lonely battle.
Zhao Deqin, a mother whose twin girls perished in the Juyuan school collapse, is lying low after being held by local authorities for 40 days, her friends said. Dong Tianqun, who lost her daughter, regularly changes her phone number to evade police.
"The officials want to control our movements. They don't want us to talk about this," said Dong, whose 16-year-old daughter was buried in the Juyuan wreckage. Continued...
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