An artist heading an independent team counting the number of schoolchildren killed in the Sichuan earthquake in May said yesterday it had verified at least 4,439 deaths using non-official sources.
Ai Weiwei, who launched the 'civil investigation' four months ago to find out how many children died in shoddily built schools when the magnitude-8 quake struck, said the team was under immense pressure from authorities to stop their work.
On his blog, which is blocked on the mainland, Ai said: 'By April 15, 2009, a total of 5,545 students died in the Sichuan earthquake based on the information collected through the civil investigation, and after a primary double-check and overlap filtering, a tally of 4,439 was verified.'
His team's tally is the only one to contain the name, age, sex, school, class, grade, home address and guardian's contact number of each pupil killed in the disaster.
Weeks after the quake left 88,000 dead, Sichuan education authorities said it had killed 4,737 students. But parents said more than 10,000 had died. The authorities have issued no figure since, despite repeated pleas from grieving parents and the public.
Sichuan's executive vice-governor, Wei Hong, said last month the casualty figures for students would come out only when a final death-toll calculation was done. 'It's a very complicated process to verify the final toll,' he said.
