The National Administration for Protection of State Secrets and the Ministry of Civil Affairs declared at a press conference on Monday that starting from August, the death toll from natural disasters would no longer be a State secret.
This appears a step behind practice. Over the years, the public has become accustomed to the media’s graphic accounts of human losses to natural disasters…
The belated announcement deserves celebration because it has removed a lingering threat to our right to know.
Amid the government’s promises to guarantee citizens’ right to know as well as the latter’s increasingly bolder claim for such a right, we have taken for granted timely access to the truth when disasters strike.
But as long as that legal barrier stood, such information supply could be stalled at any time. After all, access to the information was illicit.
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