Children Buried, Questions Raised

Families held funerals Friday for children killed in a school blast in southeast China and insisted the government was hiding the truth in blaming the explosion on a lone madman.

The blast tore through the center of the two-story building in the village of Fang Lin in the eastern province of Jiangxi while nearly 200 schoolchildren and teachers attended class, officials said.

Four classrooms were leveled and officials said that in addition to the 42 dead, about 27 people were injured — burned, crushed or both.

Legislators expressed shock at the disaster and called for laws to improve safety in China's underfunded schools.

State media stuck to the official explanation that a deranged man walked into the school with two bags of explosives on Tuesday and detonated them. State media said he died in the blast.

Victims' families accused the government of failing to conduct a proper investigation and blamed school officials, who they said forced children to make fireworks — a key industry in the area — in class.

"They should start by penalizing the responsible village officials and school teachers," said Zhang Shushen, whose 11-year-old boy died.

While some Chinese are fearful of criticizing their government to foreign news media, parents freely vented their outrage. Even after Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji blamed a lone madman, parents contacted by phone continued to accuse officials of lying. They also disputed the official death toll, saying at least 53 people were killed, all but four of them children.

On Friday morning, 36 children were buried and six others cremated, said Gao Yumei, the aunt of an 11-year-old victim.

Other families were conducting religious ceremonies and had not yet buried their dead, Gao said. She said the government delivered more than 40 coffins to the village by truck Thursday.

Relatives said police maintained a heavy presence in the village and detained reporters who tried to interview victims' families.

"The government wants to unify the explanations of the disaster," said Wen Hunan, whose 11-year-old son was injured. He said his outgoing long-distance telephone service had been cut off, although he could still receive calls.

Villagers had varying stories about Li Chuicai, the 33-year-old firework maker said by the official Xinhua News Agency to have set off the explosion. Xinhua said he was known in the village as "psycho" and that in notes found by police at his home Li wrote about detonating explosives and killing dozens of people.

Yang Dongliang, whose 11-year-old sister was killed, said Li did appear to have mental problems. But he also said Li had supplied explosives to the school for its fireworks business for years. He said Li delivered 132 pounds of saltpeter, which is used in gunpowder, to the school Tuesday "and somehow caused the explosion carelessly."

Parents in Fang Lin said pupils had been forced to make fireworks since 1998, but they couldn't move their children because the village had only one primary school.

Zhang Chenggen, whose 11-year-old son was killed, said pupils normally worked a half-day assembling firecrackers in class. Profits subsidized the school and went to school officials, he said.

At China's national parliament, which is in the midst of its 11-day annual meeting in Beijing, delegates called for laws requiring school safety officials and compensation payments for student deaths and injuries.

One delegate cited a survey that found 164 "abnormal deaths" in 76 high schools in the last two years, Xinhua said. It didn't say how all of them died but cited the delegate as saying that murders, hooliganism, robberies and other crimes were taking place in schools.

Cash-strapped Chinese schools do sometimes rent out space to businesses to raise money.

Reuters

A relative hears the news

China has suffered a string of explosions and collapses of public buildings, including schools. The disasters are often caused by shoddy construction and poor safety standards, particularly in the fireworks industry, which includes both large-scale plants and small, unlicensed workshops run by farmers as a source of extra cash.

Fireworks are a key industry in Wan Zai and nearby counties, and a government map of the region uses a picture of exploding fireworks to symbolize the local specialty.

In March 2000, an explosion at a huge illegal firecracker factory killed 33 people in Jiangxi provinces's Pingxiang city — just over 60 miles west of Wanzai county.

In August, another explosion of firework ingredients stored illegally in an apartment killed 21 in another Jiangxi county. A blast in the southen province of Guangdong last June killed 38.

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