Relatives of some of the 309 victims of a Christmas night blaze in the Chinese city of Luoyang staged an angry street protest yesterday over bungling and neglect by local officials that lay behind the tragedy.
Police announced the arrest of four welders who they said ignited the fire that sent smoke billowing through a packed disco above a department store, and then fled without raising the alarm. Eight others were held for giving false testimony about the incident, the official Xinhua news agency said.
One group of 10 or so relatives clambered onto a traffic police podium in the middle of a busy Luoyang intersection and unfurled a banner reading "Justice For The Dead of 25.12". Other relatives and several thousand onlookers filled the surrounding streets, blocking traffic in a rare public protest, according to the witnesses.
Uniformed police charged the podium and ripped down the banner. One distraught old man pounded his fists against the window of a police loudspeaker truck calling on protesters to disperse. "You are supposed to be the flesh and blood of the people, but you hide the facts," he yelled.
Sorrow has been mixed with fury amid revelations that the shopping centre was declared one of the 40 most dangerous buildings in Henan province three years ago, but that nothing was done to fix the problems.
Xinhua said the building owners had been warned repeatedly about inadequate fire-fighting systems.
It said the privately run disco was operating illegally after its licence was revoked.
Most of the victims were suffocated by smoke in the dance hall that had only two emergency exits, one hidden behind the bar.
There were no sprinklers or smoke alarms.
Websites of local newspapers said that in an emotionally charged atmosphere rumours of a cover-up were swirling around Luoyang. "People are going crazy," said one newspaper.
Some people believed the true death toll was as high as 600 or 700, the newspaper said. There were rumours that 400 tickets to the dance hall were sold to male patrons alone on a party night when all women were let in free.
Xinhua quoted an investigation team as saying the welders, employed illegally by a Taiwan investor in the commercial centre, were working in a basement of the six-storey building when sparks dropped onto furniture and cotton flannel.
One local newspaper website said among the 20 arrested were six managers of a Taiwan company that part-owned the six-storey shopping centre.
The welders "failed to put out the fire with water and fled the scene without reporting the fire", Xinhua said, adding that all four had "confessed to their violation of law".