BEIJING (AP) — Soon after a fire on a crowded commuter bus killed 47 people and injured 34, Chinese authorities offered an explanation: One of the dead had written a suicide note, boarded the bus during the evening rush and set it on fire.
After doubts were raised online, police said they found pieces of the burned cart and woven bag the arsonist used to transport gasoline. They said survivors saw Chen Shuizong set the fire, and that his wife and daughter confirmed that the suicide note was written in his handwriting.
Many Chinese still aren't buying it. Their reaction reveals at least as much about their distrust of the government as it does about the June 7 fire in Xiamen, a prosperous port city in southeast China's Fujian province.
"How can you solve a case in such a short period of time?" asked Liu Shanying, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "And the suspect is dead. From a legal point of view, the case just looks very suspicious."
China's authoritarian government tightly controls access to information, censors the media and regularly refuses to provide data. Incidents of authorities or officials denying an event or guilt only to later be found to have been lying have added to citizens' distrust, as has endemic corruption.
Police changed their story twice following an explosion that killed four people last year at a community center in southwest Yunnan province's Qiaojia county. Twelve hours after the blast, they said a woman with a 1-year-old baby was the perpetrator. Days later, they named a different suspect and stated categorically that he was responsible. Three months later, two other men were named the criminal suspects.