Artist continues quest for real quake toll

Published on May 10, 2009 by brooks | This story has been viewed 144 times

The cameras converged on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as soon as the news broke.

An official from the Sichuan provincial government announced a final toll for the number of children missing and killed from last year’s devastating earthquake: 5,335.

Although authorities have confirmed more than 69,000 people died in the quake – which struck in the middle of a school day on May 12, 2008 – until today they had not released any details about the children who died in thousands of collapsed school buildings.

It’s a highly sensitive topic here in China, where local officials have been accused of negligence in cases where schools caved in while surrounding buildings remained standing. Authorities have resorted to a harsh crackdown on families of the dead children and the media for trying to report or investigate the story.

“I’m glad they try to be responsible now,” said Ai, attributing it to ”the tremendous pressure of the media or the public.”

For months, the artist – who helped design the iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium featured prominently in the Beijing Olympics – has been contributing to that pressure.

Searching for answers
Since December, he’s been working with a small team of volunteers to document every child lost in the quake, and it’s raised his profile even higher. They have collected information on more than 5,200 names so far, and he expects the final number to be much higher than the official toll.

“We have to really re-evaluate the values of life in this society,” he said in his studio in Caochangdi outside downtown Beijing. ”We never really treat the human life or human rights in the way it should be…The basic public information should always be clearly revealed.”

It would appear not everyone agrees. Postings on Ai’s popular blog updating the list of names are deleted by censors.

But he remains unfazed.

“I have [the] rights to express my [opinions] on my blog,” he said.

His volunteers have encountered worse. During field expeditions, they have been routinely harassed, searched, and detained, according to Ai, who also notes that parents of the dead children are treated far worse when they try to get to the truth.

And he says the “official” children’s death toll announcement will not halt the project’s momentum. ”It doesn’t mean anything to us, because you don’t have the related information,” Ai said to another journalist on his cell phone. ”You don’t know who [the victims] are and which school they [lost] their life.”

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