Quake parents mourn amid crackdown

By Chris Buckley

BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - Anguished parents on Thursday marked one month since China's devastating earthquake, demanding answers about flattened schools and begging forgiveness from dead children buried under the rubble.

In a sign of political tensions in the quake-hit area, police expelled volunteers and apparently detained a local dissident who had offered to support the grieving families.

Two dozen parents gathered around concrete shards and twisted steel at what was a Beichuan school, one of many toppled by the quake even as government offices and homes nearby stayed upright. Poor construction work is suspected as a reason for the collapse of the schools.

A mother burned incense, ceremonial funeral money and a pile of her late daughter's clothes on the rubble mound, while other parents wailed apologies at children crushed under the ruins.

"Your mother is so sorry for this," cried the middle-aged mother of one girl, Chen Ya. "No. It was me. I'm so sorry," said Chen's grandmother.

The parents' laments jarred with government efforts to pass the one-month date without major ceremony, focusing instead on rebuilding and messages of determined patriotic unity.

Few families in hard-hit parts of Sichuan province in the nation's southwest escaped losses among those killed in the May 12 quake -- close to 70,000 according to the latest count, with many thousands missing and likely dead.

But the thousands of crushed children have become the most politically charged legacy of the disaster, distilling public anger about corruption and lax regulation blamed for shoddy school buildings.

"They said this building was strong and quake-proof, but when we saw it, the concrete was like talcum powder and the steel was as thin as noodles," said Mu Qibing, whose 17-year-old son was killed along with some 1,200 other pupils.

Police later moved in to heavily restrict access to the area but did not clash with a crowd of parents, locals said.

In the night, the parents met local officials who heard their demands for an inquiry into the collapsed building and complaints about a memorial plaque the parents said police had pulled down a day after they put in on a nearby hillside.

"We want justice for the children who perished," said one of them, Chen Yanhuai, a father whose son died in the school. "We don't understand why they treat us like the criminals when we are the victims."

The ruins of another school at Juyuan were also guarded by dozens of police, and the town 50 km (30 miles) from the province capital, Chengdu, was blocked by checkpoints.

A planned memorial by parents of hundreds of children who died there was prevented by police who went door to door warning them to stay away, several parents said.

At a flattened school in Wufu, where 270 children died, about 80 parents held a brief memorial ceremony, some of them said.