Chinese dad is sent to jail for campaigning against toxic baby formula.

A few weeks ago, a man threw his shoes at a former Australian Prime Minister live on national TV. And this didn’t happen on any station, it happened on the station that is funded by the government. The next day, there was much talk about it, almost all of it lighthearted. John Howard himself joked about it. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to the man except that he hadn’t been charged, questioned or even thrown out of the ABC on his arse. Oh, and that he returned to the front desk to ask for his shoes back.

This is the country in which we live.

Now, China. The wonderful country that holds the economic hopes and dreams of dozens of other countries’ economies in its hands. The most powerful country in the world. The country that hosted the Olympics a few years ago to huge acclaim. Didn’t it all look nice? Weren’t the facilities impressive? Human rights…what? Something about Tiannenman Square and some students and a guy facing an armoured tank while holding a plastic shopping bag….but yeah, that was ages ago.

Things are fine now, right? Oh, well, Google is in a bit of trouble there and they don’t have access to all the websites we do but it’s not so bad, is it?

Well, consider this. Your baby gets sick, almost dies, after consuming some baby formula. Your baby was one of 300,000 Chinese infants who were made ill  in 2008 after drinking milk formula deliberately tainted with melamine. Six babies died. 50,000 were hospitalised. So you start a website as a way for some of the parents of those babies to get support and make contact with each other.

And for that? You get sent to jail for ‘inciting social disorder’.

A Chinese court has jailed a man who organised a website for parents of children who became ill from drinking tainted milk after his own son became sick. The court found Zhao Lianhai guilty of “inciting social disorder”, his wife Li Xuemei said.

Zhao founded Kidney Stone Babies to provide information and resources for parents after about 300,000 Chinese infants were made ill – with some 50,000 hospitalised – in 2008 after drinking milk formula deliberately tainted with melamine. At least six babies died.

Police arrested Zhao last December, charging him with the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ jail. “He has already been in jail almost a year. It’s so unfair,” Ms Li said.

We take so much for granted in our country. I’m not suggesting it’s a good thing for people to throw their shoes at public figures with whom they disagree. I think that was manifestly uncool no matter what you think of John Howard or anyone else’s views.