Anger and confusion is mounting in China over last week’s warehouse blast that killed 114 people in the northern city of Tianjin, with the Communist party’s official mouthpiece vowing there will be no cover-up.
“The central government’s attitude is
both clear and firm: there is no doubt the case will be thoroughly investigated,” the People’s Daily newspaper wrote on Monday, nearly five days after the disaster.
Referring to a string of political and military heavyweights toppled by president Xi Jinping’s war on corruption, the newspaper added: “If big cases such as those involving Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and Ling Jihua were thoroughly investigated in an open manner, why should there be cover-up over a safety accident?”
The newspaper’s insistence came after a third day of protests in Tianjin over the government response to Wednesday’s explosions, which followed a blaze at a warehouse storing hazardous chemicals.
Protests were held over the weekend as displaced families and relatives of missing firefighters demanded compensation and answers about the whereabouts of their loved ones.
“Our kids were on the frontline, but now nobody can tell us whether they are dead or alive,” the relative of one firefighter who was among the first to reach the scene of the disaster told the Paper, a Chinese news website.
“How could they send those kids there when it involved explosives?” asked Li Changxing, the mother of another missing firefighter.
Liu Zhiqiang, the uncle of a 19-year-old firefighter, told the Paper his nephew was “certainly dead”. “But even if he has died, there should be an explanation.”
On Monday, Gong Jiansheng, a Tianjin propaganda official, said 70 people were still missing, of whom 64 were firefighters. Fifty-four of the dead have so far been identified.
“Navigating through the blasts zone is extremely dangerous because of the burning chemicals and twisted containers, which could collapse at any time,” Wang Ke, the head of a military team specialised in dealing with chemical disaster, told Xinhua, China’s official news agency.
During a visit to the disaster site on Sunday, China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, said: “We owe the families of victims, Tianjin people and all Chinese an answer.”
The country’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced it was investigating “possible illegal acts, such as abuse of power or dereliction of duty and [would] deal with those acts which may constitute crimes”.
Yet as military cleanup teams attempted to remove hundreds of tonnes of the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide from the blast site on Monday, even China’s state-run media criticised the government’s lack of openness.
“Tianjin is not an exceptional case in terms of the inadequate disaster response work,” the Global Times said in an editorial that called for greater transparency.
One Chinese activist has launched her own online database of the missing. Many of them are migrant workers whose deaths she believes could be brushed under the carpet. By Monday the list contained 132 names. The oldest was a 73-year-old called Lu Fuyou; the youngest a 17-year-old firefighter, Wang Shengmin.
“The government’s handling is secretive,” the activist compiling the database told the Guardian. “I do not believe the government would voluntarily publish the list of the missing people.
“We started making this list yesterday, and before that the government had not even mentioned the number of contractor firefighters who were missing,” added the activist who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “It’s just like in the 2008 [Sichuan] earthquake [when] the government would not publish the missing people list voluntarily.”
After the 2008 earthquake dissident artist Ai Weiwei launched a campaign to record the names of thousands of Chinese students who died in poorly constructed classrooms. Only a year later did the government publish its own list of at least 5,335 children and teenagers who died.
Dozens of protestors gathered outside a Tianjin hotel where media briefings are being held on Monday to demand compensation for their wrecked homes.
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