Sichuan toll remains taboo

Local police in southwestern China's Sichuan province got heavy-handed this week with nearly a dozen witnesses and journalists who tried to attend the subversion trial of Tan Zouren, an activist working to uncover the actual number of children killed in the massive earthquake last year.

Among those caught in the crossfire was avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, who I wrote about here earlier this summer. Ai, who has been collecting the names of schoolchildren killed in the Sichuan quake and trying to get an accurate count, planned to testify at Tan's trial but police burst into his hotel room and barred him from leaving. He said he was punched in the face and held for more than 10 hours. 

Video posted on YouTube also showed police combing through the hotel room of Hong Kong journalists who traveled to Chengdu to cover the trail.

The government says about 5,300 children (among nearly 90,000 people) died when their school buildings collapsed in the quake on May 12, 2008. Critics say the number is far higher, and shoddy buildings stemming from corruption and graft are at fault. Given the continued political sensitivity of the issue, apparent yet again this week, it's unclear if the real death toll will ever be known.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/china-and-its-neighbors/090813/sichuan-toll-remains-taboo