China presses grieving parents to take hush money on quake

The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. While clutching a contract and a pen, he asked Yu to get into his car. Yu's daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school in Hanwang who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. He became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if that school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction. The contract had been thrust in Yu's face during a long interrogation by the police the previous day. In exchange for his silence, and for acknowledging that the ruling Communist Party had "mobilized society to help us," he would get a cash payment and a pension. Yu had resisted then, but this time, he took the pen. "When I saw that most of the parents had signed it, I signed it myself," Yu,... [read full story]