SHANGHAI – Some wailed and some staggered with grief as the relatives of the 36 people killed in Shanghai’s New Year’s Eve stampede visited the disaster site Tuesday for seventh-day commemorations that are a revered ritual in China. But each family was allowed to stay only about five minutes in the tightly managed visits, and government workers roughly dragged away one middle-aged woman when she began crying out emotionally.
The government’s strict arrangements reflect efforts to keep tight controls over the disaster’s aftermath and prevent distraught relatives from coalescing into a critical group that would draw sympathy and galvanize public calls for greater accountability.
“Such a major public safety incident can tug the heartstrings of the public, and the acts and words by victims’ relatives can make the public sentiments to swing, making it a key task for authorities to control the families, limiting their contacts with each other or with the media,” said Zhao Chu, a Shanghai-based independent commentator.
The victims’ relatives laid bouquets of white and yellow chrysanthemums and bowed deeply to the statue of the city’s first Communist mayor that overlooks the 17 concrete steps on Shanghai’s famed riverfront known as the Bund where the stampede took place.
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Three dozen people, including a 12-year-old boy, were trampled and asphyxiated amid a crowd of hundreds of thousands of New Year’s revelers.
Accompanied by government workers, every family was kept in vans waiting for their turn to mourn on the seventh day after death, when the deceased person’s soul is believed to return to the earthly world after disappearing. Some relatives brought photos and offered fruits and burned some fake money.
The stampede is one of the worst public safety disasters in the Chinese showcase city of Shanghai, shocking the metropolis as well as the country.
Chinese parents have raised questions whether authorities had properly notified the public of the cancellation of a popular riverfront light show on the Bund, whether the city government took proper emergency measures when crowds still swarmed for the midnight show and whether police and medics responded effectively to the disaster.
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News assistant Fu Ting and video journalist Paul Traynor contributed to this report.
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