{"id":47622,"date":"2015-06-15T21:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T21:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=47622 "},"modified":"2015-06-15T21:35:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T21:35:00","slug":"47622-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=47622","title":{"rendered":"Court to Order Retrial in Case of Milk Scandal Parent Activist"},"content":{"rendered":"
2015-06-15<\/div>
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Guo Li’s identity card issued by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation.<\/div>
 Photo courtesy of Guo Li<\/div>
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A court in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has cast doubts over the jailing of Guo Li, a father who campaigned for compensation for babies and infants sickened by the 2008 melamine-tainted milk scandal, he told RFA on Monday.<\/div>
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Guo Li, a simultaneous interpreter, was handed a five-year sentence by a court in Guangdong’s Chaozhou in 2010 for “extortion” after he launched a campaign for compensation from Guangzhou-based infant formula maker Scient after his child got kidney stones.<\/div>
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After his release last year, Guo lodged an appeal with the Guangdong Provincial High Court, which recently issued a judgment highly critical of the original decision.<\/div>
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“They were of the opinion that the facts of the case were unclear, there was insufficient evidence, the [court of first instance] had broken two regulations, and that the case against me was inconclusive,” Guo said.<\/div>
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“The Guangdong High People’s Court ordered my re-arraignment … which my lawyer told me is lawyer-speak for ordering a retrial,” he said.<\/div>
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Guo welcomed the news, in spite of suffering ongoing mental and physical health problems he attributes to maltreatment including poor food and dirty water in prison.<\/div>
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“This should be excellent news, but we still have to wait for the final judgment, which they could hand down directly, or they could order a fresh trial,” he said.<\/div>
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The provincial court found insufficient evidence to prove that Guo had used threats to extort material gains from the company, according to the judgement.<\/div>
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“The appeal meets the criteria for a retrial,” it said. “This court will proceed with an arraignment in accordance with article 242, clause 2 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China.”<\/div>
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Melamine scandal<\/div>
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Guo’s child was one of 300,000 made ill by infant formula milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which saw a total of 21 people convicted for their roles in the scandal, two of whom were executed.<\/div>
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The government said after the 2008 scandal that it had destroyed all tainted milk powder, but reports of melamine-laced products have occasionally re-emerged.<\/div>
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Guo detailed three years of harsh treatment during his prison sentence, as the authorities put pressure on him to “admit to his crimes.”<\/div>
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“They kept hassling me to plead guilty and sign a document, so I could get an early release,” Guo told RFA. “I thought it was very strange … and I didn’t do it. I stuck to my guns.”<\/div>
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“During that period, of course, I had a lot of beatings and a lot of solitary confinement,” he said. “They held me in isolation.”<\/div>
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In earlier interviews, Guo told RFA that he was held in a cell measuring little more than one meter across and deprived of food and water, and given moldy food and dirty ditch-water instead.<\/div>
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He said he attributes his mental and physical health problems to this experience.<\/div>
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“My memory [has been affected], and there have been very big changes in my personality,” Guo said. “Sometimes I have angry outbursts towards my family, and I feel as if I am outside my own body, and I haven’t the energy to do the things I’d like to do.”<\/div>
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“I have no way to find work, because I am now designated a disabled person,” Guo said, adding that he has been recognized as disabled by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation.<\/div>
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For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>Guo Li, a simultaneous interpreter, was handed a five-year sentence by a court in Guangdong's Chaozhou in 2010 for "extortion" after he launched a campaign for compensation from Guangzhou-based infant formula maker Scient after his child got kidney stones.<\/div><div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}