China said today that 5,335 schoolchildren and students had died or remained missing after last year's Sichuan earthquake, the first official tally in what became a politically charged issue because of allegations of corruption and shoddy school construction.
The overall death toll in the May 12 quake was unchanged at 68,712. Almost 18,000 people are still listed as missing, the head of Sichuan civil affairs department, Huang Mingquan, said in the provincial capital of Chengdu.
The government began a count of the dead and missing within hours of the magnitude 7.9 quake, which destroyed huge portions of Sichuan, but authorities have refused until now to say how many pupils were killed when thousands of classrooms collapsed while buildings around them remained intact.
The issue has been an enduring source of grief for parents. They say the schools crumbled so easily because corruption and mismanagement led to slipshod construction methods and weak buildings that were not up to standard. Some say materials meant for school construction projects were sold by contractors for personal gain.
Parents who protested have been detained or warned against speaking out. Activists sympathetic to their cause have been harassed or taken away by police.
Officials blamed the power of the quake for the number of flattened schools, and said compiling and confirming the names of the pupils was a complicated process.
No reason was given for the release of the figures today , days before the first anniversary of the disaster.
In a transcript of the press conference posted on the Sichuan government's website, officials said that "once there is concrete evidence to prove that problems exist in building designs and construction, relevant departments will investigate according to law".
Liu Xiaoying, whose 12-year-old daughter was killed when the three-storey Fuxin No 2 primary school collapsed, said she was sure the toll was much higher. "I hope the investigation will continue and that the people responsible will be seriously punished," she said.
Liu is under surveillance after travelling to Beijing twice to petition the central government. "I hope the government will really do what they say they would and not brush off us parents," she said. "If this is the case, the hearts of my husband and I will be more at ease."
Ai Weiwei, an artist and high-profile critic of Beijing's policies, said the announcement was a sign that the government may be caving in to "pressure of the common people, pressure from the media," but it was still an empty gesture.
"There's no significance to this announcement because it didn't give any names or any other information on where they died, which schools or which classes they were in," Ai said. "This is nonsense."
In his blog, Ai has confirmed almost 5,000 pupil names and estimates that the toll could reach 8,000. He said that at least 20 of his helpers had been detained by local authorities.
Tan Zuoren, who conducted his own investigation into 64 schools in the quake zone, has estimated that more than 5,600 pupils are dead or missing. Tan, who has since been detained on suspicion of subversion, said that number was incomplete.
The official China Daily newspaper today reported that a circular issued by the cabinet had ordered safety controls for the construction of schools to be strengthened. The circular those who engaged in illegal practices would be severely punished.