Chinese Government Denies Citizens Their Culture, Inflicts Emotional Cruelty

Parents who lost their children in China's earthquake fear they will not be allowed to properly commemorate the disaster's first anniversary.

Many parents want to return to the site of the schools in Sichuan that killed their children when they collapsed. But the Chinese authorities have cruelly stopped them from going to the schools on sensitive occasions, and are said to be monitoring the parents ahead of the May 12 anniversary.

China has not said how many children were among the 90,000 dead and missing. The government has admitted that nearly 14,000 schools - some of them poorly or hastily built - were damaged in the magnitude-8 earthquake.

One mother, Hu Hongfang, wants to return to Juyuan Middle School to mark the first anniversary of the death of her 15-year-old son Guo Jun. But she is not hopeful that she will be allowed to get to the collapsed school site, in the city of Dujiangyan in northern Sichuan Province. "On every occasion parents have wanted to pay their respects to their children, the whole school and nearby area have been sealed off," she said.

Zhou Siqiang, whose daughter died at the Juyuan school, said parents have been prevented from visiting the site on a number of occasions. He said they were stopped from going to the site on last month's Tomb Sweeping Day, when Chinese people traditionally visit family graves.

Across Dujiangyan, parents at another collapsed school said that many methods were used by the authorities to prevent them from staging public displays of grief-- including stopping them from leaving their homes and taking them away from the city during sensitive times.

The local government and police did not comment on the parents' claims. But the man who runs a cemetery where many of the Xinjian schoolchildren are buried confirmed that there is a special team monitoring the parents. Chen Hua, who works at Baoshanta Cemetery, told reporters that a special "work team" was attached to the local police station.

Amnesty International has also released a report saying the authorities continued to intimidate and detain parents who had lost children in the earthquake.