Chinese father punished for food safety activism
Zhao Lianhai, a Chinese man who started a support group for the parents of children sickened in one of the China’s worst food safety scandals was found guilty of inciting social disorder and sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison. Zhao Lianhai pushed for greater government responsibility and compensation for victims and their families following the 2008 scandal.
Zhao vowed to appeal and began a hunger strike to protest the verdict. Six children died and nearly 300,000 were sickened by baby formula tainted with melamine, which can cause kidney stones and kidney failure. The industrial chemical, used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizer, was added to watered-down milk to increase profits and fool inspectors testing for protein.
Zhao, who organized a website to collect information about the poisonings, was taken away by police in November 2009. His sentence appears to be part of a trend of growing intolerance for government critics and independent social activists. Environmentalists, AIDS activists and lawyers who took on sensitive cases have disappeared, been locked up, or otherwise harassed, while this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient writer Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison sentence for organizing a widespread protest against the authoritarian, one-party political system.