Naming The Nameless

• Source: The Global Times
• [21:14 May 04 2009]
• Comments

The list comprises the children’s names, gender, age, school and class, and home address. New information is added almost every day.

Ai said he visited the quake zone shortly after the disaster struck and was shocked and sickened by the image of thousands of school bags strewn about the rubble.

“I want to know who owned those bags,” he said.

As well as his efforts at home, Ai said he is planning to hold an exhibition about the devastation in Sichuan later this year in Munich, Germany. He said he is also hoping to buy some advertising space in national newspapers to promote the list around the time of the first anniversary of the quake.

But his first priority is establishing the facts about the children who died. It’s not an easy task.

On March 8, 300 days after the earthquake, Wei Hong, vice-governor of Sichuan said in a press release issued at the NPC sessions that the death toll from the earthquake could not be finalized, and that the exact number of schoolchildren killed was unknown.

The only official figures on student deaths came from the Sichuan education department on May 21, which put the totals at 6,376 killed, 1,274 missing and 1,107 buried.

The State Council has not published any figures on the death toll since September 25 when it said 69,227 people had been killed and 17,923 were missing.

In November, the Sichuan government said it had published a list of the names of 19,065 people killed in the quake, but Ai said he doubted the claim.

“The list can’t be found anywhere, it’s not on any website. No one knows when or how it was made public,” he said.