As the first anniversary of the May 12, 2008 Sichuan earthquake approaches, news from China tells of earthquake victim’s relatives being harassed, activists being arrested and the media being obstructed.

The struggle of the many parents who lost their children (in many cases their only child) to find out the reasons why so many school buildings collapsed with the resultant loss of so many young lives, while other surrounding building survived, are constantly thwarted by obstacles placed in their way.

The story of the parents courage in dealing with their unimaginable grief and the hindrances to their endeavours to uncover the truth about why so many school building collapsed is vividly shown in the forthcoming HBO documentary  “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” which premieres on Thursday, May 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The roll-call of schools and the numbers of children who died in them, coupled with the framed photographs of children and the scenes of devastated  school buildings give an indication of the true scale of this human tragedy. Fuxin Primary School, 127 students died. Hanwang Primary School, 317 students died. Xinjian Primary School, 438 children died. Hongbai Schools, 430 children died.

The voices of the grieving parents with their justified belief that they are entitled to the truth and an explanation through an official investigation into the widespread allegations that corruption and the use of sub-standard building materials all exacerbated the impact of the earthquake are powerful and convincing.
The film follows a group of parents to Mianzu City to voice their complaints to the director of the Board of Education, one parent shows an official letter of compensation offering $317 per dead child. Another group of parents resolve to march 70 miles to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. When confronted by officials and police the parents make it clear that they are not seeking to criticise the Party or the Government, they simply want the government to represent them and investigate the allegations of corruption and sub-standard school buildings. En route to Chengdu the Fuxin parents are persuaded to go to the regional capital of Deyang. Officials in Deyang promise to visit the Fuxin school the next day and dully arrive with inspectors and engineers from the Architecture Institute. The film captures some of the inspectors/engineers admitting that the construction of the school was faulty, hard to deny given the evidence of foundation bricks with no mortar and concrete with wood embedded in it.
The parents are offered compensation of $8800 per child, this is tied to a pledge to “obey the law and maintain social order“. One parent makes it clear, its not about the money, they want the truth.  A group of parents from Fuxin file a suit seeking additional damages and a public apology, however their lawsuit is rejected.
Broadcast schedule for China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province.

Amnesty Internationals’ report “Justice Denied: Harassment of Sichuan earthquake survivors and activists” documents instances where some parents and relatives were detained for up to 21 days for trying to seek answers from officials about why their children died. Some have been detained repeatedly and the youngest detainee was only eight years old.
“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 Amnesty International Asia-Pacific Deputy Program Director. “The government of China must cease harassing earthquake survivors who are seeking answers and trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.”

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China has received several reports of journalists being harassed and detained in Sichuan province in the run up to the anniversary of last year’s earthquake.

• On April 1, a French journalist was working in Dujiangyuan on a story about a family whose daughter was killed in a school collapse when he and the family were stopped and detained by both uniformed and plain clothed police. The parents were released. The reporter was forced to go the police station and informed he needed to register to report in the area.
• On April 2, a German reporter was barred from Yingxiu while attempting to cover the area ahead of the first anniversary of the quake. The reporter was in a public cemetery amid a group of Chinese journalists interviewing relatives of the dead when authorities approached him and told him he had failed to register. They led him away from the cemetery.
• On April 6, a German television crew working in Shifang and nearby areas was physically prevented from filming and detained for over five hours. When the crew was waiting to meet the father of a child who died in a school collapse, unidentified men grabbed the man in front of the journalists.

“Parents of student quake victims, who are trying to understand how and why their children died, deserve answers and compassion, not threats and abuse,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Persecuting quake victims and their relatives adds cruel insult to already grievous injury.”
Such harassment is occurring despite the Chinese government’s specific pledge in its new National Human Rights Action Plan, published on April 13, to protect the rights of Sichuan quake victims.

In addition to harassing victims’ family members, state security forces have also targeted individuals trying to investigate the possible causes of school collapses or compile lists of quake victims. Those individuals include:

• Huang Qi, a veteran dissident and founder of http://www.64tianwang.com/, a website dedicated to publicizing human rights abuses across China. Huang was detained on June 10, 2008 in Chengdu, while investigating allegations that shoddy construction had contributed to the collapse of schools in the earthquake. He was formally charged with “possessing state secrets” on July 18, 2008, and his trial was indefinitely postponed for undisclosed reasons in February 2009.
• Zeng Hongling, a retired university professor. After posting online critiques of building standards in the Sichuan earthquake zone, Zeng was arrested in May 2008 and faces “subversion” charges.
• Liu Shakun, a teacher. Liu was reportedly arrested and sentenced in August 2008 to one year of “re-education through labor” on the charge of “disseminating rumors and disrupting social order” for posting on-line photographs he had taken of collapsed schools in the Sichuan earthquake zone. Liu was released from a labor camp and allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence outside of custody on September 24, 2008.
• Tan Zuoren, a literary editor and environmentalist. After trying to compile a name list of children killed in the Sichuan earthquake, Tan was detained in March 2009 on suspicion of subversion.