China quake parents unbowed in pressing complaints

"They told me not to go and make trouble. If the government does not give us a clear response I will keep going to seek justice. My child died," he said.

PROTESTS UNREPORTED

In past days, Chinese newspapers and magazines reported on the many schools that fell, citing experts who blamed brittle concrete, thin or non-existent steel reinforcement and improperly positioned pillars.

But the protests by parents have not been reported locally, and efforts by officials to discourage foreign reporters talking to parents underscore the school issue's sensitivity when the government wants the focus on massive relief efforts for millions of displaced people.

"This is going to be a touchstone issue that brings together questions about how to deal with the quake aftermath -- accountability, the public interest and compensation," Xu Wu, a former Chinese journalist and now a public relations expert at Arizona State University, said of the schools.

"Normally four to five weeks after a disaster, relatives of victims recover from the initial shock and become more demanding and questioning. I think that will start happening."

In Beijing, lawyers have held meetings on the rights of quake victims and issued calls for a full inquiry into the schools.

"That it was school rooms that collapsed first in the earthquake is a national disgrace," rights campaigner Xu Zhiyong told a recent forum, according to a transcript seen by Reuters.

Meanwhile troops and disaster officials continued to battle the threats from the more than 30 unstable "quake lakes" created by quake-caused landslides choking rivers and endangering hundreds of thousands of people downstream.

The National Meteorological Centre forecast rain and intermittent thunder storms in parts of the quake area on Thursday and Friday. ( www.nmc.gov.cn ).

China still has an urgent need of tents to shelter the millions of quake refugees, the head of the international department at the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.

(Writing by Chris Buckley; Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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