Local officials tried to cover up scale of Chinese mine disaster by hiding bodies, report finds
- The attempt to hide the true number killed at the iron ore mine in Hebei province has seen 20 people detained, including local officials
- The officials told their superiors only two people were missing after the mine was flooded – a figure that would have kept the investigation at a lower level
Local officials in northern China moved the bodies of miners killed in a flood last year and produced a fake accident report to downplay the scale of the disaster, an official report has concluded.
In 14 total bodies were discovered after the iron ore mine in Qianxi county in Hebei was flooded on September 2 and one other miner’s body has never been found, a report by the Hebei provincial emergency management committee said.
But the report said local officials committed serious misreporting by issuing a report that only two people were missing – which meant the investigation could have been carried out at a local level.
The report said local officials, including the county’s party secretary Cai Zongjian and mayor Shi Jingman spent several hours conferring after they learned of the accident before sending the false report to their superiors in Tangshan city, which is about 165km (102 miles) east of Beijing.
Seven days after the flood, the bodies of 12 workers were transferred to another location in secret.
According to China’s regulations, mine accidents with less than three deaths are considered general accidents and are investigated at a county level. Between three and 10 deaths go to the city level, while accidents that lead to between 10 or 30 deaths are listed as major accidents that should be investigated by the provincial authorities.