Time Magazine reports on Ai Weiwei’s quest to document the deaths of school children in the Sichuan earthquake:
May 12 marks the first anniversary of the devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake in China’s southwest that killed an estimated 86,633 people. In the past year, Beijing has poured billions of dollars into the region’s reconstruction, and hundreds of thousands of people who were left homeless after the disaster have found shelter and begun rebuilding their lives. But many parents whose children were killed one year ago today remain incensed about the apparently shoddy construction that led to what some allege were a disproportionate number of schools collapsing. Despite what human-rights activists say has been a campaign of intimidation by the government, including beating and jailing parents to try and keep them silent, one group has continued to press Beijing for details on school construction and the exact number of students killed in the disaster as well as their identities and other details. It’s the kind of battle routinely fought all over rural China, pitting powerful local officials and businessmen against ordinary citizens who feel they have been wronged. It’s also a struggle that is almost always won by the powers that be. (See pictures of the aftermath of the Sichuan quake.)
But the cause of the earthquake parents has proven different. Not only do the parents continue to have a vast reservoir of sympathy from ordinary Chinese for their plight, they also have Ai Weiwei, an unusual champion whose determination not to let the issue be buried under bureaucratic obfuscations and strong-arming is — if anything — even greater than their own.
See also a report from the New York Times on how the anniversary is being marked in China:
One year after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake devastated parts of Sichuan Province, China paused Tuesday to remember the nearly 90,000 people left dead or missing by the disaster and to thank international donors for their help with the recovery effort.
But the anniversary was dogged by continuing questions about the deaths of thousands of Sichuan children crushed in the rubble of school buildings that the Chinese government says were solidly built, but many parents insist were substandard.
President Hu Jintao led a ceremony Tuesday at the quake’s epicenter, in the leveled town of Beichuan, shortly before 2:30 p.m., the time the quake occurred. Mr. Hu adjusted the flowers on a single, large memorial wreath adorned with a red sash. Nearby, a large clock stood with its hands stopped at 5:12, signifying May 12, the day of the tragedy.
