Shanghai stampede | China targets critics

Residents gather near the spot of a deadly stampede where flowers are placed to commemorate the victims

The Shanghai government took measures at the weekend to prevent public criticism of its role in the New Year’s Eve stampede that left 36 people dead, including banning interviews with relatives of victims and allowing only photos cleared by censors into city papers.
The cause of the stampede on the city’s historic waterfront known as the “Bund” – which claimed the lives of mostly young people, including a 12 year old boy – remains unclear.
But online discussion of the event, including criticism of local police for failing to staff the event adequately, has been shut down with critical posts deleted. According to the South China Morning Post, dozens of those who posted online criticisms have been interrogated by police.
The stampede happened at 11.35pm at a popular sightseeing spot on the Bund, one of the best vantage points to watch a light show at the Pearl Tower, icon of the Shanghai skyline, on the opposite bank of the Huangpu River.
Hundreds of thousands of revellers, many of them tourists from outside Shanghai, thronged to the waterfront, perhaps unaware that some of the events that traditionally take place there on New Year’s Eve had been cancelled. At least 36 died and 49 were injured, 13 seriously.
Shanghai prides itself on being China’s best managed and most advanced city. News of the tragedy has come as a shock to government officials trying to create an image of the city as a world class financial centre in the making.
Censors have carefully managed the scale of coverage in local media, with most allowed to report factually on what occurred. However, they cannot speculate on the reasons for the stampede or publish stories airing complaints from relatives about failure to prevent the stampede, slow response by emergency services, or preventing access to victims in hospital.
At the scene of the stampede yesterday, police allowed groups of two or three people to lay flowers at the foot of a statue of Shanghai’s first Communist party mayor, Chen Yi, who gave his name to the square near where the stampede happened.
Large crowds surveyed the impromptu memorial to the dead, gazing away from the waterfront view that normally enthrals Shanghai sightseers. Police blocked entrance to a Communist party compound elsewhere in the city, where relatives were taken to negotiate compensation with the government.
Local media were ordered not to “interview any relatives of the injured and dead or interview those attending memorial meetings” and told to delete all copies of a story from last week’s Beijing News entitled: “10 questions about the stampede at the Bund”.
Local news websites are not allowed to use the stampede as their top item online, and “all information about attacking the party and government and attacking the social system of our country should be deleted”, a directive to local media said.
China has long been criticised for censoring reporting of tragedies to cast the government’s role in the best possible light and limit critical public discussion. Government officials say controls are needed to prevent rumours and maintain social order. Patti Waldmeir
FT, Shanghai, Financial Times/MDT Exclusive