‘We just want to know the truth’
Relatives of cruise ship victims frustrated by lack of answers from Chinese authorities
JIANLI, CHINA— Stella Wu arrived in this sleepy agricultural town on the north bank of the Yangtze River on Friday in hopes of retrieving her 51year-old mother’s corpse from the capsized Eastern Star cruise ship.
For days, she had sought help and answers about the tragedy at home in Shanghai.
She stood outside the local government office until 1 a.m., but staffers would only say they had no information from the scene and that the leaders were in a meeting.
Next, she and other relatives of missing passengers decided to march on a busy street to try to get authorities to pay attention. Police, she said, came and dispersed them, dragging and hitting people.
Finally, she bought a train ticket to Jianli, only to find that people from her neighbourhood committee had purchased seats on the same train — ostensibly to help her, but clearly also to keep tabs on her.
As night fell Friday and workers finished lifting the crumpled blueand-white ship upright with giant cranes and bringing it to shore with perhaps more than 300 bodies inside, Wu was exhausted and a bit exasperated.
“We can’t go to the morgue or the site of the rescue,” she said, slipping away from her minders for a few brief moments. “We need to unite and make clear what our demands are. We will not make trouble and not cry anymore — we have used up all of our tears. We just want to know the truth.”
Four full days after the Eastern Star went down amid a storm with 458 people aboard, the patience of Wu and other bereaved family members was wearing thin on Friday.
Only 14 people are known to have survived the disaster, while 331 have been confirmed dead and more than 100 still unaccounted for. After dark, workers in white hazmat suits began entering the damaged ship and offi- cials said it would probably take about seven hours to extract the corpses inside.
Residents and officials in Jianli have tried to roll out the red carpet for Wu and an estimated 1,500 next of kin, as well as visiting journalists and rescue personnel.
Hundreds of taxis and private vehicles are offering free rides; hair salons are giving complimentary washes and cuts; and at least one photo-developing shop was printing the customary Chinese funerary portraits at no charge.
More than 200 locals volunteered rooms in their homes after hotels sold out. DJs on Radio Jianli, FM 100.7, were playing matchmaker between those who needed accommodations and those who had space to spare.
Such measures were undoubtedly aimed at consoling — but also controlling — next of kin. President Xi Jinping has ordered a “thorough investigation” of the disaster, yet authorities have also emphasized the need to “maintain social stability,” which is Communist Party-speak for preventing any major protests.
Next of kin were dispersed across hotels and guest houses in Jianli, and often accompanied around town by escorts.
Family members of victims complained Friday that authorities have not released the names of any of the deceased, nor told relatives when they might be able to claim their loved ones’ remains. Although meteorological officials have said a freak tornado occurred in the area, investigators have not disclosed any preliminary findings. The captain and the chief engineer were among the survivors, and are being held in police custody. In an interview published Friday, the captain said he was attempting to speed up and get the vessel moving in the direction of the wind when it suddenly overturned.
The brief remarks from Zhang Shunwen, carried by the state-run New China News Agency, seemed likely to fuel further questions about whether he used good judgment as he navigated through inclement weather — and just how severe the winds were at the time. Weather officials have said the storm brought winds up to 12 on the Beaufort scale, or more than 117 km/h.
Zhang told the news agency that the wind had been blowing from south to north at a level 3 or 4 on the Beaufort scale, or between about 12 and 28 km/h, and that he was attempting to manoeuvre the Eastern Star into alignment with the wind.
“I wanted to go with the wind, moving north,” he said, according to the agency. “I wanted to use speed to lessen the wind’s force on the boat, but all of a sudden the wind became much stronger and I lost control of the ship.”
Wu and other family members expressed skepticism of official reports emphasizing weather over human error as a primary cause of the accident. Public confidence in government investigations of disasters has been sorely tested by numerous instances in recent years of cover-ups and attempts to limit independent media coverage as well as critical comments and questions on social media.
“Don’t tell me about a tornado. I’ve asked locals and nobody said they’ve ever heard of having a tornado before. And if you do say there was a tornado, why was it just this ship that continued to sail while other ships were docked?” she asked. “We want to know why this decision was made. We want to know more answers to this.”