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Court verdicts should be coming soon in the ongoing scandal over China's tainted milk. So far the contaminated milk has killed six children and made nearly 300,000 sick. As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing, some victims' families are not pleased with the compensation they expect to receive from the government. And observers note that the trial is not addressing how the scandal was covered up.
ANTHONY KUHN: As is often the case in China, which now claims the world's biggest online population, hundreds of victims' families first met in cyberspace. In English their Web site's name means KidneyStoneBabies.com. That's the ailment that hit most of the kids who drank milk or milk powder tainted with the chemical melamine. On Friday police detained and then released the Web site creator and some parents who planned to give a press conference. Other parents met with reporters in the street. Twenty-three-year-old Lan Junxian is the mother of twins, both of whom got kidney stones after drinking Sanlu brand milk powder.
Ms. LAN JUNXIAN: (Through Translator) The government has promised compensation worth $30,000 for fatalities and up to $7,300 for serious cases. I may get no more than $300. We're just here to defend our children's rights. Right now, they've only got kidney stones, but we don't know what ailments might affect them in the future.
KUHN: The government plan calls for a onetime payment and a fund to cover victims' medical expenses until they're 18 years old. On Friday the parents demanded lifelong medical care for their children and research into the possible harm that melamine can cause. Another parent, Hou Rongbo, says his eight-month-old son who was raised on Sanlu milk powder was first diagnosed with kidney stones and then with leukemia. He doesn't know whether melamine is at fault.
Mr. HOU RONGBO: (Through Translator): Our child is at home, and we have given up on treating him. A bone marrow transplant would require the equivalent of $44,000. We're just an ordinary farming family with very little income. Our child is now one year old, and we just watch him get weaker by the day.
KUHN: As parents grappled with their ordeal, prosecutors in several north China courts laid out charges last week against Sanlu dairy company executives and melamine producers. On Wednesday Sanlu's former general manager, 66-year-old Tian Wenhua, admitted that she knew about consumer complaints as early as May, but that Sanlu continued to sell hundreds of tons of tainted milk power until the scandal went public in September.
Anne-Marie Brady is an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She says that in fact Tian was just following orders.
Dr. ANNE-MARIE BRADY (School of Political Science and Communication, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand): So Mrs. Tian is probably feeling very resentful because she'll know that lots and lots of people knew about what was going on, and she's just having to take the blame.
KUHN: Brady notes that no charges have been brought against the New Zealand dairy firm Fonterra, which held a 43 percent stake in Sanlu. Nor has anyone held the Communist Party's propaganda department accountable for banning media coverage of food safety issues in the run-up to the Olympics. Critics say that despite its slogan of putting people first, Beijing made Olympic glory and public image its priorities. Again, Anne-Marie Brady.
Dr. BRADY: Unfortunately for those 300,000-odd Chinese kids and their parents, the national interest was much greater than the interests of those people and their health and safety.
KUHN: China's top product safety official has already resigned in the scandal. Tian Wenhua and her associates face possible life terms in prison. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.