Government keeps mourners under wraps
Officials impose measures to mute public outcry over New Year’s Eve stampede
SHANGHAI — Some wailed and some staggered with grief as relatives of the 36 people killed in Shanghai’s New Year’s Eve stampede visited the disaster site Tuesday for seventhday commemorations that are a revered ritual in China.
But each family was allowed to stay only about five minutes in the tightly managed visits, and government workers roughly dragged away one middle-aged woman when she began crying out emotionally.
The government’s strict arrangements reflect efforts to keep tight controls over the disaster’s aftermath and prevent distraught relatives from coalescing into a critical group that would draw sympathy and galvanize public calls for greater accountability.
“Such a major public safety incident can tug the heartstrings of the public, and the acts and words by victims’ relatives can make the public sentiments swing, making it a key task for authorities to control the families, limiting their contacts with each other or with the media,” said Zhao Chu, a Shanghai-based independent commentator.
“Struck by the same tragedy, the relatives can easily resonate with each other, and it’s only natural they want to band together to take collective actions and make collective appeals to the public, and that could mean the authorities losing control over the social sentiments.”
The authorities’ grip over such sentiments comes at the expense of the victims’ families, Zhao said. “The method is brusque toward the families, preventing them from resorting to law and to the media, but — in a positive way — it can indeed alleviate the shock to the public.”
The victims’ relatives laid bouquets of white and yellow chrysanthemums and bowed deeply to the statue of the city’s first Communist mayor that overlooks the 17 concrete steps on Shanghai’s famed riverfront known as the Bund where the stampede took place.
Three dozen people, including a 12-year-old boy, were trampled and asphyxiated amid a crowd of hundreds of thousands of New Year’s revellers.
Accompanied by government workers, the families were kept in vans waiting for their turns to mourn on the seventh day after death, when the deceased person’s soul is believed to return to the earthly world after disappearing. Some relatives brought photos and offered fruits and burned some fake money.
Journalists were corralled metres away, only to observe the grieving.
“Why are your media shooting there? Dare you publish what you have shot?” a young man called out to the journalists as he was led away from the mourning site. “It’s been a week. The government does not care about us. The government does not talk to us.”
A middle-aged woman in the same group broke down earlier. “I want to die. I want to die,” she cried out. “My child just came to see the great city of Shanghai. My child did not come back.”
Tan Ching Hin, father of a 21-year-old Malaysian victim, Tan Wei, said he was never told directly not to criticize the authorities, but he understood that to be the expectation.
“We were under constant surveillance so we could not be in touch with the outside, such as journalists,” Tan said. “We were watched every step.”