January 8, 1996
Web posted at: 2:00 p.m. EST (1900 GMT)
From Correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Keen to discredit charges that
children in orphanages are deliberately starved to death,
Chinese officials Monday took journalists on a conducted tour
of a Shanghai orphanage, showing them room after room of
apparently healthy, happy-looking children.
The children seemed to have warm clothes, lots of toys, and
plenty of attention from health care workers. It was a far
cry from the abuse, neglect and starvation alleged by the
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch-Asia in a recent report.
The report charged that more than 1,000 children died of maltreatment between 1986 and 1992. It cited case after case of children who were systematically deprived of food and medicine, often even tied to their beds and left to die.
Much of the evidence in the report was supplied by Zhang
Shuyuan, a former doctor in the orphanage -- the Shanghai
Children's Welfare Institute -- who fled China last year with
detailed records. According to Zhang, the abuses occurred as
part of a deliberate orphanage policy to control the number
of children.
Zhang said former director Han Weicheng directly supervised the policy, and personally abused and even assaulted some of the children.
Han hotly denied the report's allegations that he condoned starvation, beat and raped children, sent children who reported on him to mental institutions and embezzled foreign donations to the orphanage.
Such actions were unthinkable, he insisted. "I did a lot of things for the handicapped children," he said. "I never hurt them."
Han acknowledged to reporters Monday that the Shanghai
government conducted an investigation of the orphanage in the
early 1990s, but said he and the rest of the orphanage staff
were exonerated.
But according to Human Rights Watch-Asia the investigation
ended in a cover-up at the highest levels of Shanghai's city
government. The agency agreed that conditions have now
improved at the orphanage, but said that was only because it
has become a major source of babies for childless parents
overseas.
The agency's report alleged that while the institute has now been turned into a model orphanage, a large number of children have been transferred to another institution in Shanghai where practices of abuse and starvation still continue.
Officials turned down reporters' requests to visit that institution.
The Chinese government has called the entire report completely baseless, although officials admitted that in 1989 the orphanage's mortality rate rose to about 19 percent -- a figure that approximately agrees with the report's estimate of 22.2 percent.
They said it was the highest death rate ever at the orphanage, and blamed it on an exceptionally cold winter.
The officials are portraying Zhang as a troublemaker who lied about conditions about the orphanage in an effort to malign Han.
Asked why Zhang, who left China last year and now lives
abroad, would continue her campaign against the orphanage
abroad, Han said, "If you want an explanation: she is crazy."
Han and Shi Derong, director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau that oversees the orphanage, also suggested that Human Rights Watch had paid Zhang to move to the United States and supply fabricated information.
Sidney Jones, New York-based executive director of Human Rights Watch-Asia, told the Associated Press that Zhang was not paid for her work, although the organization helped her obtain a $5,000 living stipend from a foundation after she left China.
"She neither sought nor received money for the information,"
Jones told The Associated Press.
Human Rights Watch, however, said that abuses at the Shanghai orphanage are only the tip of the iceberg. It pointed to high mortality rates in orphanages nationwide, and cited statistics from around China as evidence that the central government is aware of and even condones practices like the ones alleged in Shanghai.
The allegations come at a sensitive time for Beijing, with heated international criticism following the sentencing of veteran dissident Wei Jingsheng. The report, observers say, makes it all the more likely that China will be condemned at the coming U.N. Human Rights Convention in March and will put China's leadership even more on the defensive.
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