Grief and anger for parents at a Chinese morgue

Tag : child pajamas

"I am Grandpa Wen Jiabao," the prime minister said on his visit ashe watched two children being pulled from the rubble, according toXinhua, the state news agency. "Hold on, kids! You'll definitely berescued."
But enraged parents interviewed at the morgue Wednesday afternoonand Thursday morning say local officials lied to the prime ministerto hide the true toll at Xinjian, which they estimate at more than400 dead children. Several parents blamed local officials for aslow initial rescue response and questioned the structural safetyof the school building. They also were furious that officialsforbade them to search for their children for two days and thenallowed access to the bodies only after the parents formed an adhoc committee to complain.
"Before Wen Jiabao came, the whole school was filled withchildren's bodies," said one mother, who sat outdoors at the morguewith her husband in the early morning darkness beside the coveredbody of their 8-year-old daughter. "Her father and I had stoodoutside the school since the earthquake. We pleaded with thegovernment, 'If she is dead, I want to see the body. If she isalive, I want to see her."'
Her husband, a thin man, leaned forward into the yellow light oftwo candles. "We're telling you the truth," he said. "Get the truthout."
The morgue is located an hour's drive outside Dujiangyan on anisolated rural road, yet the parking lot was filled at 1:50 a.m. Thursday.
Parents and other family members clustered around the bodies oftheir children. Some burned fake money to bring their lost childgood fortune in the afterlife. In one room, 25 small bodies werescattered on the floor. Some children had already been taken away;an empty, white body bag lay near a sneaker and a filthy pair ofboy's trousers.
Some families had placed flowers or sticks of incense inside emptywater bottles as makeshift memorials.
"There are more in there," said a man in a blue shirt, pointing toa rear door. He walked outside to a covered walkway and paused.
Scores of bodies, covered with sheets, were lined in two long rowson the concrete floor. Others were placed in an adjacent room.Parents sobbed or sat silently beside bodies.
"They are all students," said the man in the blue shirt.
"Look," he said pointing to a red-and-white jacket folded besideone body. "That is the school uniform." He pointed to a MickeyMouse backpack. "There is a book bag."
The two rows of bodies ended at an open door that led to the largesteel furnaces used for cremation. In China, the dead are almostalways cremated, usually fairly soon after death. Usually, there isenough time for funeral ceremonies and rituals, but parents saidthat officials at the morgue were worried about cremating so manybodies before they started to decompose. So some parents have beenasked if their children could be cremated with dead friends to savetime.
Parents say they were only allowed to begin identifying theirchildren Wednesday. The bodies had remained inside the gatedgrounds of Xinjian Primary School for two days until officialsbegan transporting them to the morgue Wednesday.
The earthquake struck at 2:28 p.m. Monday, and many parents rushedimmediately to the school. Xinjian had about 600 pupils, ages fromroughly 7 to 12, but when parents arrived most of the building hadcollapsed. They started frantically pulling away bricks and chunksof concrete with their bare hands.