Chinese officials attempt to silence angry families of trapped miners

XINTAI, China -- Officials increased the pressure on the distraught families of 181 trapped miners Tuesday, deploying riot police, threats and money to silence their angry demands for answers to what caused the disaster.

The Huayuan mine flooded Friday, trapping 172 workers underground. Nine others are missing in a nearby mine run by a different company.

The families have been questioning why the Huayuan Mining Co. sent their loved ones into the 3,000-foot-deep shaft while the threat of flooding grew and other area mines shut down.

"The news reports say it is a natural disaster because of the rain. But the accident is because of the mine management. Every year there is flooding," said Ma Xiumei, as she stood outside the Huayuan compound with her sister to demand information about their missing brother.

The Huayuan accident is shaping up to be one of the worst mining accidents in 58 years of communist rule.

On Monday, five men stormed into the company compound and smashed an office.

In a sign the government and Huayuan were bracing for more trouble on Tuesday, police tape was strung up 20 yards outside the company's gate. Twenty riot police with shields and black helmets stood behind the cordon.

Government and company officials used other tactics to discourage angry protests. Some families were sequestered in hotels and ordered not to leave or talk to other families, said two relatives of a trapped miner who sneaked out of their hotel.

Mining company officials also visited families and told them to stay at home. Some families said they received $265 -- more than two months of the average miners' wages -- to keep quiet.

While the Ma sisters stood outside the gate complaining, a woman dressed in white slacks, and later identified as a Huayuan employee, took Ma Xiumei aside and delivered a threat.

"She said, 'Don't make too big a fuss about this. You've got to think about your brother's job,'" Ma said.

Such intimidation counts for a lot in a place like Xintai, where coal mines are the main employer.

Government officials and Huayuan executives have largely refused to face the miners' families, and have shied away from giving detailed accounts to the media.

Instead, the government put three experts advising the rescue effort in front of the media at a news conference, which quickly took on a defensive tone.

While the experts sought to portray the mine as a natural disaster, brought on by the heavy rains and complicated by the mine's depth, they refused to say how long it would take to siphon off the water or estimate the chances for the miners' survival.

The head of an expert panel, water engineer Bu Changsheng, was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying that the pumping would take "100 days" and that "the rescue operation is not progressing as quickly as we hope." But when pressed by reporters, Bu refused to confirm the estimate, saying it was hard to assess.

Xinhua cited officials at the rescue task force headquarters as saying that rescue crews were still nearly 330 feet from the 14 nearest miners, who were trapped 680 feet below the surface.

Many of the families have privately said they believe the miners are dead and want the government to ensure adequate compensation. For the Ma sisters, that meant enough money to care of their nearly 70-year-old mother, their brother's wife and the couple's two young daughters.

"If these miners are safely brought home we won't say a thing, but if it is the worst then they (the company) need to think about my younger brother's laid-off wife, his children, his aging mother," said Ma Xiuhua.