China censors anniversary of high-speed rail crash

[John Ashworth]

China censors anniversary of high-speed rail crash

China has blacked out the first anniversary of the worst train crash in its history, with no memorial service for the 40 people who died and the media banned from mentioning the disaster.

Telegraph
By Malcolm Moore, Beijing 3:45PM BST 23 Jul 2012

The collision between two bullet trains outside the southern city of Wenzhou last year remains highly sensitive; a moment when confidence in the Communist party crumbled as officials first played down the news and then attempted to bury the wreckage before a thorough search for survivors had been completed.

On Monday, the scene of the accident, where a further 192 people were injured, was closed off to the public. One survivor was taken in by police at Hangzhou South rail station on his way to visit the site.

Two popular bloggers, Li Chengpeng and Wang Xiaoshan, did manage to make it to the site early in the morning, and post a photograph calling for people to remember the anniversary, but were followed by teams of men dressed in black, they said.

Journalists at a local newspaper in Wenzhou told Japanese reporters from the Asahi Shimbun that they "wanted to cover the issue" but that "there is nothing we can do because the local government and the Railways ministry do not want the accident to be revisited".

"The accident is something we want to forget," said a senior municipal government official to the newspaper. "If a local government were to plan a ceremony, that would bring shame on the Ministry of Railways. You surely understand that, don't you?"

Searches for "Wenzhou" or "high-speed train" were censored from the Chinese internet.

The Communist party is preparing for a once-in-a-decade handover to a new set of leaders in the Autumn and has emphasised the need for stability. The crash was the first fatal accident on China's much-vaunted high-speed network, although speed was not a factor: the trains collided at less than 62mph because of a signalling failure.

"For the past year, I have felt a bit numb," said Henry Cao, 33, an American citizen and father of four who lost both his parents in the crash and was himself severely injured. "I have lost my ambition to try to make it and life is meaningless. I have a responsibility to my family, but I understand now how death is part of life."

Mr Cao, who lives in Colorado, plans to return to China with his brother Leo to arrange the shipment of his parents' bodies next month. However, the family remains in dispute with the Railways ministry over the compensation they are due and over who will pay for Mr Cao's ongoing medical care in the United States.

"My brother lost his spleen and kidney and had broken ribs and a fractured ankle. He is lucky to be alive. They were in the second train, the one that rammed the first train from behind, and they were in the second carriage. My father died quickly after hitting his head.

My mother's chest was crushed but it took them two hours to get her to the hospital," said Leo Cao.

"The ministry of Railways was very vague in the beginning and continues to be vague," he said, adding that US diplomats have also failed to advance their case.

The Global Times, the only state-run newspaper to mention the anniversary, reported that Xiang Weiyi, a three-year-old orphaned girl who was miraculously pulled from the wreckage after 21 hours, and after the search for survivors was prematurely called off, had not been accepted into kindergarten because she remains partly disabled.

Another family told the newspaper that "after the memorial service, the Railway ministry officials fled and have never contacted us ever since. The investigation result was delayed, and the complete name list of all the passengers on the trains has still never been released."

Additional reporting by Valentina Luo