“Dozens charged in China mine disaster ‘cover up’”

“Dozens charged in China mine disaster ‘cover up’”

China’s mining industry is infamous for its danger and consequential commonality of death accidents. Although China’s central government has attempted to prioritize better safety standards, enactments are often dismissed in favor of scoring profit during a period of relative economic prosperity. News concerning China’s charging of 10 journalists and 48 government and mining officials with the collective “covering up” of a mine-disaster that resulted in the death of 34 miners, surfaced in the media today. Investigations, ordered by China’s State Council, have concluded that the disaster took place in the Bebei province, on July 14 2008, a few weeks prior to the summer Olympic games in nearby Beijing. Chinese officials are now being charged with having destroyed evidence, having moved dead bodies, as well as having paid off journalists to keep the disaster under the national and international radars at the time. According to investigative conclusions, “the 10 journalists were paid $380,000 to not report the disaster…(while) relatives of the miners were kept quiet with threats and ‘large payments’.”

Can charging these approximately 60 individuals offer the opportunity to rectify their performed injustice in society? Or is it impossible to apply a principle of rectification that would re-establish conditions of justice as if the injustice itself had never taken place? Simply reversing the acts of injustice recalled above certainly would not be the answer. Consider simply the case of government officials bribing journalists by paying them $380,000. It obviously seems ridiculous to imagine that this isolated act of injustice would be rectified by returning the $380,000 to the government officials, but what is it that should happen according to Nozick, (who suggests that any injustice that develops as a consequence of unjust practiced must be rectified) or perhaps any other philosopher that offers means of rectifying past injustices?

Referenced source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8385950.stm