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Thursday, November 11, 2010

China imprisons Father for protesting against poisoned Fonteera milk



China jails tainted milk activist Zhao Lianhai
A Chinese activist who campaigned for compensation for victims of a 2008 contaminated baby milk scandal has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Zhao Lianhai, whose child was among the 300,000 made ill by the milk, was convicted of inciting social disorder.

Mr Zhao founded a website to provide information for parents after it was found milk formula had been laced with the industrial chemical melamine to give it a high protein-content reading.

At least six babies died.

"It is such a harsh sentence," Mr Zhao's lawyer Li Fangping told the Associated Press news agency.

"The crimes he was accused of were nothing more than what regular citizens would do to defend their rights."


WTF? Zhao Lianhai simply wanted to provide information to parents about the poisoned milk Fonteera were involved in and he gets a 2 and a half year sentence?

Do we really want to sell a regime like that our farm land? Arresting artists for expressing themselves and now parents whose babies get sick from poisoned Fonteera milk seem so petty and cruel it makes a mockery of China's attempt to portray themselves as a benign force of peoples friendship.

8 Comments:

At 12/11/10 11:57 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obviously we do not know both sides of the story, and perhaps there has been somewhat of an injustice. However, as in all countries there are legal and illegal ways of getting your point across.

In any case there are far more people (on not just a proportionate but an absolute basis) imprisoned in the United States for crimes which would be considered misdemeanours in most countries. The US has 2.3 million people behind bars, China 1.6 million.

In the US people have been jailed for eight years for the 'crime' of importing lobster tails in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes. Its true.

http://www.economist.com/node/16640389


Do we really want to sell a our farm land to a regime which locks up on a proportionate basis seven times the number of people as China, and which sentences people to eight years in prison for importing lobsters in plastic bags, rather than cardboard boxes?

Oh wait. We already have.

 
At 13/11/10 12:07 pm, Anonymous fuck wayne said...

Do we really want to sell farm land to a country that executes more of it's prisioners than every other country in the world combined? For property crimes even? Don't pretend you have a moral high ground when sneering at America, fool.

Obviously we do not know both sides of the story, and perhaps there has been somewhat of an injustice.

Thousands of babies ill, some suffering kidney problems that will last a life time, some dead. Corrupt Chinese officials that wouldn't make an official product recall becasue of their culturally weak and cowardly concept of "saving face". And all you can say is "some what of an injustice"?

You are an ununtterable fuckwit, fuck off to china and stay there, NZ doesn't need or want you.

 
At 13/11/10 7:13 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"executes more of it's prisioners than every other country in the world combined"

Only an unutterable fuckwit and innumerate fool would make such an unutterably idiotic statement.

China has the world's largest population. So there are simply more people deserving of execution there than are in any other country. China is about third or fourth on executions, per capita, with Singapore the highest, I believe.

The number of executed prisoners in China, proportionally speaking, is about the equivalent of executing 15 prisoners a year in New Zealand. Not such an outlandish number. I'm sure most New Zealanders even could easily accept an annual list of 15 of its worst criminals for execution.

And killing people for 'property' crimes. What's wrong with that? I'm sure many New Zealanders would not give a toss if Mark Hotchins, or Eric Watson, or the like met with a grisly end. Or what about those corporate crooks in the US who have trashed the world economy? How much suffering have they caused?

The death penalty is widely supported in China - it is a populist measure, and the government has said that the reason why it will not be abolished in the short term, is that the vast majority of the Chinese people would not accept its abolition.

And in fact the death penalty has majority support in most Western countries as well. Over a half of Australians, I believe, supported the execution of Nguyen Van Tuong, by Singapore as a matter of principle.

On the matter of the death penalty China behaves far more democratically than many Western nations.

 
At 13/11/10 7:14 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Don't pretend you have a moral high ground when sneering at America, fool."

I don't have to 'pretend'. I do have the moral high ground.

America, in pursuit of her own interests, has directly killed far more innocent civilians than China ever has, especially over the past 30 or even 40 years.

"And all you can say is "some what of an injustice"?"

Obviously you can't read. I was referring to the arrest of the activist. Not the the poisoned milk saga. Justice was provided in the end. Two of those involved were executed, and others sentenced to various prison terms.

"wouldn't make an official product recall becasue of their culturally weak and cowardly concept of "saving face".

Only an utterly ignorant fool would tie the problem of food adulteration in China to culture. Do rich confucianist places like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, have these problems? Of course not --or at least not to any greater extent than rich Western countries.

Poor countries, whether 'democratic' like India, or otherwise like China, do. Nothing to do with the political system. The problem of counterfeit drugs was such that India passed a death penalty law a few years ago to deter those involved.

Note that when America was going through a similar stage of economic development, as China is now, it too had widespread food adulteration and fake medicines - which prompted the establishment of the FDA.

"fuck off to china and stay there,NZ doesn't need or want you."

The fact is I was born here, and my grandfather was here and experienced the Napier earthquake. He paid a poll tax (a large amount of money at the time) to be here. So you see my presence here, it could be argued, is more legitimate than the presence of a descendant of some post-war Englishman.

Obviously you would not tell a white New Zealander of political conviction different to your own, or who was pro-British or whatever, to fuck back off to Britain or whatever other place he came from in Europe.

You obviously think just because you are white, you get to decide who belongs or does not belong to whatever part of the world.

Sorry mate, Western hegemony of over the rest of the world is starting to come to an end. If you were of a previous generation Africans would be calling you 'bwana' and you would be able to whip Chinese rickshaw pullers while playing 'rickshaw polo', and in fact kill Chinese with complete impunity under the principle of 'extraterritoriality', and keep the 'chinks' (along with dogs) out of your Shanghai parks.

But unfortunately for you, you were born too late for all of this. And this is obviously causing you a lot of angst.

The great 20th century socialist revolutions all over the world have rolled back Western imperialism, and US and British imperialism is now in its last days. The future is bright.

 
At 13/11/10 8:54 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good work Wayne, your family will recieve and extra ration of potatoes this week for those fantastic cut and paste replys. This week they will recieve four instead of three for the week.

Long live the glorious revolution!

Commrade Chen

 
At 14/11/10 8:16 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your right Wayne, staples are for holding paper together.

 
At 14/11/10 5:55 pm, Anonymous zzzzzzz said...

"The great 20th century socialist revolutions all over the world have rolled back Western imperialism,"

Who won the Cold War? I know, I know, it breaks your heart.

Still, I don't expect leftists to be able to deal with facts and logic in a reasonable manner.

 
At 19/11/10 4:44 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

goddamit youll be sent to the camps for that comment!

 

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