In China, mourning parents haunt Children's Day

BEIJING — It is meant to be a celebration of childhood, but in Sichuan province Sunday, Children's Day turned into a day of mourning, and a provocation to parents whose children were killed by falling school buildings during the powerful earthquake three weeks ago.

At a half-dozen schoolyards across the region, parents came to grieve and to demand answers.

In the town of Wufu, they shouted slogans about corrupt politicians. In Mianzhu, they staged a sit-in. And at Juyuan, they were shooed away by soldiers who had sealed off the grounds of a middle school so workers could search for the bodies of six children still missing. By evening, one had been recovered.

Over the weekend, the government raised the death toll from the May 12 earthquake to just more than 69,000, with an additional 18,800 missing and thought to be dead. The state news media reported a helicopter evacuating injured survivors had crashed in the fog near Wenchuan on Saturday, with the fate of the five crew members and 14 passengers unclear.

On Sunday, government news agencies reported the successful completion of a canal designed to drain water from a blocked river that had been threatening more than a million people downstream.

The official news media, however, largely ignored the Children's Day gatherings.

At Xinjian Primary School in the city of Dujiangyan, about 600 people put on white T-shirts with red lettering on the front and back that read, "Severely punish the corrupted elements in the 'tofu dregs' buildings," a Chinese colloquialism that refers to the spongy byproduct from bean curd.

They lined up in rows according to the child's class. One by one, each row walked to the front of those gathered and bowed three times to the rubble, before filing into the center of what used to be a four-story school.

One woman clawed the concrete and pounded bricks with her fists until she collapsed, heaving tears and burying her face in the rubble. Some were silent as they lighted candles and incense and burned paper money, a ritual to aid a child in the afterlife.

Government officials, responding to the outcry from parents, have promised to investigate why so many school buildings fell. In Beijing, the State Council said last week that it would punish construction companies who built the schools and the officials who inspected the work. In Sichuan province, a local official resigned, saying he felt responsible for the large death toll of students and teachers, thought to be in excess of 10,000.

However, for the parents, placing blame is a complex matter.

Most of the dozens of schools that collapsed in the quake were built more than a decade ago, with multiple layers of government and private companies involved.

Information from The Washington Post is included in this report.