China’s “poisoned milk” trial – punishing the victims while the criminals strike again
Thursday, 1 April 2010.
Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info
Yet another legal travesty is unfolding in China, following the recent harsh jail sentences imposed upon Liu Xiaobo and Tan Zuoren. On 30 March at the Daxing District People’s Court in Beijing, the trial of Zhao Lianhai opened. Zhao is nicknamed “father of kidney stone babies” for his role in organising and campaigning on behalf of parents whose children were injured or killed in the tainted milk scandal two years ago.
China was shaken in 2008 by revelations that at least eight children had died and more than 300,000 had been contaminated, many needing surgery, after consuming milk laced with melamine. Melamine is banned from food production as it causes kidney and liver disorders, but its illicit use was widespread to boost protein content after milk was diluted in order to bulk up the quantity and boost profits. Parents’ groups insist a further 12 babies died from melamine poisoning, a figure rejected by the authorities. The parents’ pressure groups make no secret of their dissatisfaction with the way authorities handled the ‘clean up’ once the scandal broke.
If found guilty, Zhao faces a maximum five year jail term. He is charged with “chanting slogans and holding illegal gatherings”. A second charge relates to “provoking many people to cause trouble”. This sounds like a completely made-up law, but under the despotic rule of China’s misnamed ‘communist’ party, it is not. Zhao has been held in detention for six months without the possibility to meet his wife and two-year old son, who suffered from consuming tainted milk in 2008.
Parents’ groups such as Zhao’s Kidney Stone Babies are campaigning for higher compensation and for lifelong medical cover for the infant victims. Melamine poisoning can inflict permanent damage on the kidneys of young children. Under the government’s compensation terms, children who underwent surgery were awarded 30,000 yuan, while all others received only 2,000 yuan, a sum that is completely inadequate according to campaigners. Many parents are still paying hefty medical costs for their children almost two years down the road.
“We have experienced too much hardship, pressure and resistance during our fight for our rights,” Zhao told the court. “Many of our families have experienced much new hurt and pain,” the former advertising executive who gave up his job to concentrate on this campaign declared. Other parents who turned out to support Zhao were barred from the court session, the latest of many incidents of harassment. His website was shut down by the authorities and attempts to hold a press conference were broken up by police. A central point in the case against Zhao is that he spoke to foreign journalists, thereby “causing trouble”. The Chinese regime fears any organisation or social movement that is not under its full control. Similar heavy-handed repression is meted out to those campaigning over badly-built “tofu” schools that claimed many lives during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, or parents protesting over kidnappings of children by traffickers.
Lawyers helping Zhao’s campaign group say that many of the parents are devastated. “We long to see a trial. But we want a trial to give justice to the victims – not to put a victim on trial,” said one of the parents from Henan. “It is not a trial of Zhao alone, but for all the victims’ parents. If what he did amounts to a crime, then all parents should go to jail.”
Last month, a new tainted milk scandal made global headlines. Milk products laced with melamine – a chemical used to make plastic furniture and glue – were again discovered on supermarket shelves in ten Chinese provinces. Highlighting the dangerous and anarchic state of the country’s food and dairy production sector, the latest scandal involved milk that should have been destroyed in 2008, but had re-entered the market in some cases deliberately repackaged and with a changed ‘sell-by’ date to evade detection. Supporters of Zhao were not slow to connect the two developments: Why is the government clamping down on the parents’ of victims while failing to deal with such reckless law-breaking in pursuit of profit?
The latest batch of tainted dairy products included ice cream, candies and cakes. These products surfaced in China’s largest city, Shanghai, and in the provinces of Liaoning, Guizhou, Jilin, Hebei, Shaanxi, Shandong and Ningxia. At least five companies are suspected of reselling the tainted milk that should have been destroyed. “Why are these things happening again?” is the question asked by many on Chinese internet chat rooms.
The 2008 scandal shook China’s one-party state, not only because of what it revealed about the food production sector, but also because news of the scandal and the public health risk was suppressed for several crucial weeks under a media gag imposed for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Later, as the full scope and horror of the scandal surfaced, dozens of officials and dairy executives were sacked or punished, and two people were executed (a dairy farmer and a milk salesman). Others were given jail sentences ranging from two years to life. But as Australian news network ABC pointed out, despite emergency measures and a few executions after the last scandal, “crucially, the government did not carry out the eradication itself”. Companies were left to implement new food safety rules themselves.
The action of the Chinese government follows a familiar pattern. Its response to other ‘emergencies’ – whether safety issues in the coal industry or environmental threats – is identical. This consists of staging a round of disciplinary measures with some high-profile announcements of ‘new rules’ (when non-enforcement rather than lack of rules is the problem). This is combined with repression against any groups that try to organise independent action or ‘take matters into their own hands’. But ironically for a regime and party that still boasts the name ‘communist’ this standard policy response contains very little in the way of greater state control or measures that infringe upon the ability of companies to make profits.
The autonomous region of Ningxia was one of the worst hit by the latest tainted milk scandal. The Ningxia Panda Dairy Co Ltd was shut down for its part in recycling contaminated milk. “The dairy industry in the region is export-oriented. Now most of its companies are in panic and worrying about possible negative impacts on their businesses,” said Zhao Shuming, secretary-general of the Ningxia Dairy Industry Association. “Flaws in the previous system led to the current chaos. What if companies with tainted milk also hold back their stocks for this round of checkups and reuse them later, just like what’s happening now?” he told China Daily (8 February).
As chinaworker.info warned at the time of the last melamine outbreak, this problem cannot be eradicated by the current regime and its reliance of temporary ‘police’ measures, while the fundamental economic rationale – to maximise profits – remains. The dairy and food production industries must be placed under democratic public ownership and control, with ties to the stock market and financiers cut and with workers and consumers democratically electing the managers on a non-profit safety-first basis. Groups such as Zhao’s kidney stones victims should be afforded every possibility to present their case and make a positive contribution to stamping out the rampant law-breaking and profiteering that typifies these companies today. Instead of putting the victims on trial, it should be the corporate chiefs and their official henchman in the dock.
China’s food safety issues are highly political. They underline the need for a complete change of society – the need for democratic socialism.
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