20100404

Mother and child (3)



What is in common between the women in these two photos? They are mothers. They are from Mainland China. They have been shopping in Hong Kong. They have come to buy milk powder.

Since melamine-tainted milk products have resurfaced in China recently and what little confidence consumers might have about milk products produced in the country has been completely shattered, Mainland mothers have been flocking to Hong Kong to scoop up imported milk powder. This apparent mad dash actually makes perfect sense. How else can the mothers protect their children from being intoxicated by the poisoned milk products which in 2008 killed six babies and made 300,000 others sick (Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently admitted that the actually figure was about 30,000,000, a hundred times more than what was originally claimed), many of whom developed kidney stones?

What is worse, the parents of the sick children are not even given the chance to fight for justice or their rights. A group of parents founded an organisation called "Home for the Kidney-Stone Babies". The founder has been arrested and charged with "quarrelling and stirring up trouble".

Parents of children whose deaths during the Sichuan earthquake in 12 May 2008 were linked to the allegedly shoddy construction of school buildings met a similar fate. Those bereaved parents who attempted to investigate the allegations of corruption and shoddy school construction have been routinely kept under surveillance, harassed, detained or put under house arrest.

Maybe the animal mothers as shown in the photos in the blogs of the last two days are a little more lucky.




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