China orders newspapers to stop investigating chemical spill
After a four-day stoppage of contaminated water supplies, the Chinese city of Harbin is expected to turn the taps back on today, but many citizens have become so suspicious of official safety claims that they say they will not be drinking. The authorities insist that a huge toxic slick released into the Songhua river by a chemical factory explosion earlier this month has been diluted, evaporated and flushed downstream. Although 100 tons of benzene — a colorless, odorless carcinogenic chemical — spilled into the river upstream, the levels are now said to be safe around the intake pipes that supply 3.5 million people in Harbin. To reassure the public, Heilongjiang governor Zhang Zuoji has promised to drink the first glass of water from city taps. But after the government’s botched cover-up attempt last week, public doubts about official pronouncements are proving harder to clear up than the toxins. It has emerged in recent days that the local and central governments were aware of the health risks soon after the blast on Nov. 13 at a factory owned by one of the country’s biggest firms, China National Petroleum Corporation, yet for more than a week officials and company managers told the media that there was no contamination of water supplies. This sense of distrust has been heightened by the latest command from the propaganda department, which ordered all Chinese newspapers to stop investigating the scandal and to withdraw their reporters from Harbin. Among the stories that they were unable to publish was that of a damages lawsuit filed at a Harbin court on Friday against Jilin PetroChemical, the CNPC subsidiary firm that ran the plant where the blast occurred.
Source: Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1651816,00.html
Via SPJ.org
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