Beijing muzzles quake families
北京堵上地震遇难家庭的嘴
Rowan Callick, China correspondent | June 23, 2008
原文地址：
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23904594-2703,00.html
THE Chinese Government has increased control around the country, fewer than 50 days before the Beijing Games, imposing a cone of silence on the parents of schoolchildren killed in the Sichuan earthquake and shutting residents out of the Olympic torch relay.
在离北京奥运会不到五十天的时候，中国政府在全国加强了控制，强迫让那些在四川地震中丧生学生的家长闭嘴，不让那些居民参加奥运火炬传递。
The thousands of schoolchildren who died in the rubble of their poorly constructed school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake have been effectively reburied as the Government sidesteps the complaints of their grieving relatives. And the Olympic torch relay, which was to have gone through Tibet, was confined to a two-hour foray in Lhasa on Saturday that appeared more like a military exercise; stores and hotels were ordered closed and residents were told not to open windows to look at the run. Spectators chosen by the authorities watched the torch pass from behind specially erected steel fences.
上千名在四川地震中死于那些劣质建造校舍瓦砾下的学生，已经被政府在回避了他们悲痛亲属的投诉后有效地重新埋葬了。同时途径西藏的奥运火炬传递已经结束，周六在拉萨那个限制在两小时突袭更像是一场军事操练，商家酒店被命令关门，居民被告之不能开窗观看传递。当局挑选的前往观看火炬的观众还得穿过特意安装的铁栅栏后才能入内。
No final figure has been released about the number of children who died when their schools collapsed, but the state news agency, Xinhua, has said about 7000 classrooms were destroyed. In several towns, most notoriously in Juyuan, school buildings collapsed while other structures around them remained standing. Only five days after the quake, Construction Minister Jiang Weixin announced an inquiry in response to rising anger in the schools' communities - which blamed corruption involving officials, or construction shortcuts taken because rural areas were starved of funds. He said: "If quality problems do exist in the school buildings, those found responsible will be dealt with severely."
死于学校垮塌的学生最终人数还没有公布，但是官方新闻通讯社，新华社说有大约7000所教室被摧毁。在一些城镇学校校舍倒塌了，但是它们周围的建筑物却依然矗立，其中最名声狼藉的是在聚源镇的。地震发生五天后，建设部部长姜伟新在回应不断增加的对学校建筑的愤怒时，就宣布要进行调查，那些谴责涉及到官员的腐败，或是由于农村地区经费短缺建筑偷工减料。他说：“如果学校建筑中存在质量问题，相关责任人员将会受到严肃处理。”
But the Government's appetite for a wide-ranging inquiry, and for media coverage, of this scandal which provoked anger throughout China, instantly subsided on May 29, when photos appeared in newspapers at home and abroad, of Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party chief of Mianzhu, kneeling in the road, pleading for parents of children buried in their school not to take their protest to the country headquarters. The parents, most holding framed photos of their dead children, screamed back at him in anger. Since then, China's media have been silenced on the issue. Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, which had been leading the way with investigative journalism from the field, was instructed to withdraw its reporters.
但是政府对此丑闻在中国全国引发的广泛质疑以及对媒体报道的态度，在5月29日后迅速平息下来了，那时候国内外报纸上图片报道了，中共绵竹市委书记蒋国华跪在路上，请求那些孩子死在学校的家长不要前往国家首府抗议。那些大多数手捧它们死去孩子遗像的家长朝着他愤怒地哭喊。从那以后，中国的媒体对此事保持沉默。已经动身前往现场去调查的广州出版的《南方都市报》，被告知撤回它的记者。
Zeng Hongling, a retired academic whose articles for a US-based Chinese language website criticise the construction of the collapsed school buildings, was reported to have been arrested in Chengdu, the Sichuan capital, and charged with "inciting state subversion". A photograph showing that steel reinforcing in the Juyuan classroom block was not much thicker than wire, was removed from an exhibition in Sichuan about the quake. Police cordoned off the area around the collapsed building to prevent parents gathering to commemorate the 35th day after their children died, an important local tradition.
一名在美国的中文网站上发表文章批评倒塌校舍建筑质量的退休学者曾红玲（音译），据报道已经在四川省首府成都被捕，指控进行了“煽动反国家政权的颠覆活动”。一张显示聚源中学教室柱子的的钢筋比电线粗不了多少的照片，已经从一个介绍四川地震的展览中撤下。警察把倒塌校舍四周用警戒线隔离，防止家长聚集纪念他们的孩子死去35天，这是当地的一个重要传统。
