There was a great, though disturbing, story over on the Chinageeks blog a week or so ago about the artist Ai Weiwei's campaign to compile a comprehensive list of the schoolchildren victims of last year's Wenchuan earthquake, and the obstruction which this venture is encountering from local and national government.
It includes an hilarious transcript of a telephone conversation between one of his researchers and a battily paranoid local government official, which concludes:
"This isn't a matter of 'speaking harshly', it's a matter of facts."
"You're talking about facts? I immediately suspect you're a female secret agent for the Americans."
You couldn't make it up! Could you? No, I don't think so.
See also Chinageeks' translation of an online article by Hu Yong on the importance of commemorating individual victims rather than impersonal numbers - he's speaking initially of the Nanjing massacre, but moves on to the Wenchuan earthquake. He couldn't, of course, extend his argument to the June 4th 'crackdown'. We can only hope that the government here will one day have the courage to do so.
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