- Title: CHINA: WALL COLLAPSES AT NGOS' FORUM ON WOMEN
- Date: 1st September 1995
- Summary: HUAIROU, CHINA (SEPTEMBER 1, 1995) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV EXTERIOR OF GATE 0.04 2. LV RAIN, PEOPLE WITH UMBRELLAS 0.08 3. SV PUDDLES 0.10 4. SLV TENT CLOSED BECAUSE OF FLOODING 0.15 5. SV PEOPLE CROSSING FLOODED AREA 0.18 6. SLV INT FLOODED TENT 0.22 7. SV WOMEN USING A POLE TO REMOVE WATER FROM TENT
- Embargoed: 16th September 1995 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HUAIROU, CHINA
- City:
- Country: China
- Reuters ID: LVA5WBEY2EJCW4KJ53WOSYUNXKBW
- Story Text: Rain transformed the sprawling site of a grassroots women's forum in Huairou, near the Chinese capital Beijing, into rivers of mud on Friday (September 1).
"I can't walk, I am tired, I am fed up. Everywhere you go there is some other story," said one disgruntled participant.
The all-night downpour caused a 20-ft (seven-metre) length of wall about 24-feet (eight metres) high to collapse into a pile of bricks along a main thoroughfare inside the site of the Non Governmental Organisations Forum on Women.
A row of 20 tents, hastily erected from parachute material, collapsed onto the chairs set up inside them.
Participants at a workshop on Achieving Parity in the Workplace for Gays and Lesbians were furious to arrive to find their venue crumpled in the mud.
"This looks like another form of discrimination," said one member of the group, who declined to be identified. "They have stuck us way out here. The Chinese know that it is going to rain so they should have known this could happen." Sidewalks of tiles laid on the earth between the tent city as walkways slid apart as the recently cleared ground turned to mud, and participants slithered and slipped between workshops.
Despite the rain, some women held a demonstration to draw attention to the suffering of "comfort women", mostly Koreans taken from their homes by Japanese soldiers and raped more than 50 years ago during World War Two.
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