Thursday, December 22, 2005

China did it again!

First it was Benzene. Now it is Cadmium. Massive toxic spill has polluted the Bie river. The second river to be raped in China. More here

It makes me wonder... People living in democratic countries can protest, demand answers, write about it, even get officials fired. People in China are lucky they are even informed about it. Will these crimes end?

Quote of the day
"Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find"~Quoted in Time (via quotegarden.com)

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Wow. That is so sad. But in a country where human babies are thrown away for being the wrong gender, I'm not surprised.

Riot said...

Jennifer,

This is news to me. I am aware of the fact that China has a strict one child per family policy. But this thing about gender I am not aware of. Could you point me to some news piece?

Chris said...

Here is an article about "the dying rooms" which is a bit disturbing to read, but sheds some light http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=the%20dying%20rooms

The general problem of abuse in china (not related to the above, and the one child rule) has been studied by UNICEF:
http://www.unicef.org/china/summarizationEnglishversion.pdf

We adopted a girl from China in 2002. She was an infant when we got her, at nearly a year of age, and she could not hold a spoon, or walk. It was obvious to us that she suffered from under-stimulation, and she had a serious problem with chronic ear/nasal infections that made her 70-80% deaf. Had we not adopted her, I'm quite certain she would be dead now.

China's one child rule, combined with the societal drive to perpetuate the family name by favoring boy children has caused severely overcrowded orphanages with 97% of the children being female. This is horrible. If I could (and some day I may) I would adopt more girls from China.