Thursday August 2 5:58 AM ET

Report: Up to 300 Trapped in Chinese Mine Disaster

By Jeremy Page

BEIJING (Reuters) - Two weeks after a tin mine flooded in southwestern China, officials still deny any casualties but reports of up to 300 miners trapped in the pit have surfaced in state newspapers as local journalists skirt a media ban.

The mine accident has followed a similar pattern to several recent disasters in China when local authorities attempted to curb the spread of information among increasingly aggressive and
Internet-savvy reporters.

The China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper, was the latest to fuel speculation of a cover-up with a report on Thursday that up to 300 people may still be trapped in the mine in Guangxi province.

Guangxi safety officials say there is no evidence yet that anyone died after the mine flooded on July 17, contradicting a state media report that 70 bodies had already been found.

``All those newspaper reports were just sheer nonsense,'' said an official at the Safe Production Office of Guangxi's Economic and Trade Commission.

REPORTERS SKIRT BAN

Journalists who rushed to the scene of the accident last month say they were harassed by mine officials and swiftly gagged by local authorities.

But many e-mailed their reports to newspapers in other provinces not bound by the restrictions.

``Actually, almost all the reports on the accident that appeared in newspapers outside Guangxi were written by journalists in Guangxi,'' said an editor of the Wuhan Morning News, published in the central province of Hubei.

``They were ordered to shut up in their own province but they sent their articles by e-mail to other newspapers.''

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Rescue workers were still pumping water out of the mine in Nandan county, 150 miles north of the regional capital of Nanning, safety officials said.

Despite the government's repeated pledges to improve safety standards, accidents at China's poorly regulated mines kill thousands of workers every year.

Last year, 5,300 deaths were officially reported in mining accidents. This year, the official toll is nearing 3,000.

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