China returns to normal - Arrests grieving parents

No way! If your kid died you get an extra 144 dollars a year! How lucky are those parents.....dot dot dot.... dot dot dot dot dot.......

I find it really absurd that a free country such as the USA willingly borrows trillions of dollars from a country such as China to fund our war in Iraq. Supposedly we are trying to install democracy among the Iraqis with money we borrow from authoritarian China. It seems the whole world (and the Bush Administration) is completely bassackwards.

There's nothing to see here-now move along-or you'll end up like your dead child.

Grieving is against the law in China? That's appalling. Boycott the Olympic's and Walmart.

There are too many people on this website that find sketchy articles on subjects which they no little to nothing about.

As an American working in Shanghai, I can't say that I know what the situation is like in Sichuan, but certainly there is nothing even close to a "Tiananmen 2". In fact, the disaster has rallied the Chinese people to support their government more than the olympics.

How about we fix our own human rights problems first like... the patriot act, secret prisons and torture, the iraq war. Seriously, we are too lazy to fix those problems, so we just bitch and moan about China.

This place is in many ways freer than America!

dianaleigh, you took the words right out of my mouth.

I find it so strange that a country can be sooo far ahead in terms of technology, yet still seeming to be almost medieval in their human rights approach.

Let's keep away from silly labelist generalizations huntre. Technically speaking, they're not even communist.

The real crime here is the corruption. If these schools had been built right, none of this would have happened. It's not the first time there's been school contruction related incidents either.

The biggest mistake the Chinese government is making right now is that is holding the people in contempt rather than the finding or scapegoating people that were responsible.

True compassion is nowhere to be found in the Chinese government. Communism doesn't allow for that.

It's sad how China is so advanced in their technology, economy and industry, but fails miserably when it comes to something as simple as human rights.

I heard this on the radio today. though the same thing.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1811455,00.html

Time magazine says so. take a look at their headline

Where does it say that the parents were arrested?

China is constantly violating human rights. When you just go ahead and use whatever term you feel like using, when that's not what's happened precisely, it undercuts the real case against the Chinese government. So say "removed" or "detained" if that's what happened. Or, if you don't know, then say that. But, based on this article, you can't really say they were "arrested."

Or it could be Tienanmen Square, part II

This could be the catalyst to mobilize the people against the Party. We might be witnessing history in the making here.

THE AP IS REPORTING THE FOLLOWING:

The students' deaths have become the focus for Chinese, both inside and outside the quake zone, fueling accusations about corruption in school construction. The brewing public anger has become a political challenge and threatens to turn popular sentiment against the authoritarian government as it copes with aiding millions displaced by the disaster.

Aggrieved parents and even rescuers have pointed to steel rods in broken concrete slabs that were thinner than a ball point pen among the 7,000 classrooms that were destroyed.

"Oh, my child!" one woman wailed as officers took the arms of the parents gathered outside the courthouse in this resort town. "Tell us something!" other parents shouted as they were led away. Their children had died in the Juyuan Middle School.

Journalists were then dragged up the courthouse steps by police — "For your safety!" they shouted. The journalists included an Associated Press reporter and two photographers who were held inside and questioned for a half-hour before being let go, after the protesters had been moved away.

The parents were forced along the sidewalk and out of sight. Surrounded by police at a side entrance to the courthouse, they tried to present what some described as a lawsuit, saying they had no other option because local officials weren't responding.

The papers were refused, the parents said. Calls to local police were not answered.

"This wasn't a riot!" Zao Ming, an official from the foreign affairs office of the local government, said after the protest. "These people were just disrupting society. ... The government will solve their problems."

The government has taken some steps to try to help grieving parents. On Tuesday, Beijing began giving compensation to some families whose children were killed — about $144 per year to each parent who lost an only child. The Ministry of Civil Affairs also announced that parents who had lost their only child had first priority in adopting children orphaned by the disaster.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the quake rose Tuesday to 69,107 and relief efforts continued in the sprawling disaster zone. Thousands of soldiers searched for a military helicopter that crashed Saturday near the epicenter, with 14 injured quake victims and a crew of five aboard.

Authorities also monitored the climbing water levels in a huge lake formed when a quake-triggered landslide blocked a river, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Suspicions between the government and grieving parents have grown since the quake. Plainclothes police roamed the grounds of the collapsed Xinjian — or New Construction — Elementary School in Dujiangyan during a memorial for International Children's Day on June 1, a parent said.

They whispered into parents' ears, "Be careful what you say among the foreign media," said Yang, a father at the event who only gave his surname.

Parents at the school said they scuffled with police Tuesday, after the authorities tried to block reporters from doing interviews.

"The police twisted the hands of some of the parents. It's too much!" said Chen Bijun, who lost her 12-year-old son in the collapse.

Parents arriving at the site Tuesday found that authorities had removed their symbols of mourning and protest, replacing them with a single banner that said "Mourn the students who met grief." The parents immediately tore it down.

Both incidents happened while Chinese leader Li Changchun, the country's fifth-ranked official, was touring other parts of the city, visiting survivors and relief workers, Xinhua said.