Chinese police have released five parents of children sickened by melamine-tainted milk, a day after detaining them to prevent them from holding a press conference, their lawyer said yesterday.
The five were preparing to speak to the media to call for better compensation and treatment for sick children in China when they were detained on Thursday evening in Beijing.
“They were released on Friday evening,” lawyer Xu Zhiyong (許志永) said. “Their [the police’s] aim was to stop them from holding a press conference.”
Police in Beijing were unavailable for comment.
Zhao Lianhai (趙連海), one of the detained, said they had been treated well but accused the police of violating their rights.
“I refused the food they provided as they had violated my human rights,” he said.
China’s milk scandal came to light in September and has had nationwide repercussions with at least six children dying and nearly 300,000 of them suffering from kidney and urinary problems after they drank milk tainted with melamine.
The chemical, normally used to make plastic, was added to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein.
Zhao said that the group was unhappy with a compensation plan announced last week by the government, which ordered 22 dairy firms that sold tainted milk to pay US$160 million in compensation to victims’ families.
“We don’t agree with the amount of the compensation, and we don’t agree with the one-time nature of the compensation,” Zhao said by telephone.
He said victims’ families should have been consulted before the plan was announced.
Other demands included continued free medical treatment for those children still suffering and research into the long-term effects of melamine.
Despite the detentions, a hastily arranged briefing went ahead on a Beijing roadside on Friday, when other concerned parents called for urgent research into the long-term effects of the chemical.
Zhao said police had told the five they would be released on Friday morning, but when the time came they were kept locked up, and they were only released in the evening.
Another detained parent, Ma Hongbin (馬紅彬), refused to talk about his detention, but was willing to describe his daughter’s health condition.
He said his 18-month-old daughter had developed kidney stones after consuming tainted milk powder made by Sanlu, one of the Chinese dairy firms at the heart of the scandal.
“She fell ill on Sept. 1, and she had very large kidney stones, which have now been evacuated,” Ma said. “But her situation is still not good, and when the weather changes, you can see her face is a bit bloated. Her fallopian tube has also expanded.”
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS