Milk Detentions a Rash Move

If a government prevents parents from protecting or speaking out for their children, it frustrates a fundamental human drive. Thus the Chinese authorities embarked on a highly risky course when, over the weekend, they detained five parents of children made ill by melamine-tainted milk formula. The parents had planned to attend a news conference demanding better compensation for their offspring (which ranges from one-off payments of between $4,400 to $7,300 to parents of children who were hospitalized, to $29,000 to parents of a deceased child). Instead they were held overnight at a re-education center outside Beijing.
Perhaps nothing will come of this. But who knows what people are capable of once they feel their children have been grievously wronged and channels of redress are closed? “We demand human rights,” said one parent who was able to attend the news conference. “We have the right to speak for our children.” It’s her use of the term “human rights” that we should be interested in. I don’t suppose that she would have ever thought of publicly demanding human rights before the milk scandal began. But things are changing now. Denying people the right to produce seditious verse or satirical theater is one thing. But when a government denies its people the right to stand up for their children, it shall never win their goodwill back.