Human Rights

OH, Sophia! You live in China and you’re going to embrace the topic of human rights? And you say that this blog is not political in nature? Really?

I can hear you say that as you read the title of this entry. I assure you that this blog is in no way political and what I’m going to talk about with regard to human rights has nothing to do with the standard Tibet-prisoners-laborers issues that most everyone is familiar with when ‘China’ and ‘Human Rights’ are mentioned in the same sentence.

This topic actually comes on the radar because of a video that went viral a few weeks ago. This film depicts a little girl – a toddler, who gets run over not once but twice, by two separate vehicles while onlookers do nothing to rescue her. In a later interview the truck driver asserts that it would have been more costly to save her life than to end it.

As I understand it, the Western world was outraged. “Yep, that’s China!” they exclaimed. “That’s where human life means nothing! Just look at that little girl being run down in the street like a dog! And that driver’s attitude! Never would this happen here!”

The thing is when looking at incidents like this is that they must be judged within the context of the society that they occurred in.

In China there is no provision for such a happening. The parents have no medical insurance because such a thing does not exist here. The driver’s insurance is not geared to cover the expenses of putting this poor, broken girl back together. All of the costs would have to be paid up front, and by all rights and obligations the driver would have to pay them. Maybe he has a family too, and they are just barely scraping by. Maybe he has no money to pay any extra costs for run-over little girls. So the money to treat her would have to come from somewhere, probably the parents. What if the parents do not have the money either?

And then, consider the therapy. Someone – most likely the parents or the parents’ family, would have pay for therapy and then get the child to therapy, if physical therapy is called for. Or, what if she needs special equipment like a wheelchair or crutches or a prosthesis? Would there be time or money for that? From either party – the driver or the girl’s family?

And then you must consider the fact that China makes no concession at all to the handicapped. There are no special parking spaces in front of buildings, there are no wheelchair ramps; indeed there are very few – make that no jobs for handicapped. There is no equivalent legislation to the Americans With Disabilities Act in China.

As I talked about in the Tulip entry (posted December of last year), there is such a stigma attached to being in any way handicapped or disfigured in China. Even with the best therapies and most advanced prosthetics, should this child grow up she would still be incapacitated to a degree. She would be denied formal education because there would be no facilities to educate her at. She certainly would be denied higher education. Most likely her parents would keep her out of school altogether to keep her from being taunted and stared at. She would be turned down for job after job, both because of lack of formal education and because of her disabilities. She would not be able to get on a bus, get down the crowded sidewalks or even into an office building should she be wheelchair bound. What would her future be like in that context?

And what about the quality of her life? Being at least disfigured if not outright disabled, she can count on never finding a mate, being gaped at by the general public and spurned by society. At least, having the internet would make a difference in her life. She could reach out to the wider world and make friends while never leaving her apartment. That’s a step up, but not a big one. Would you like to live like that?

And would she live in pain the rest of her life? You bet! Anyone who has suffered a past injury can attest to the fact that the old trauma manifests itself at weather changes and during the winter, or when rain is about to fall, or even if you twist or stand or sleep the wrong way. Some never quite get over that broken arm or sprained ankle. In some cases, such as a torn rotator cuff of damaged knee, the injury gets progressively worse until it either demands replacement or incapacitates the victim altogether.

And then you have to think about the fact that this is a little girl, 2 or maybe 3 years old. Had she been rescued and operated on, perhaps repeatedly, her parents would have a lifetime of worry and care and financial strain to look forward to. Instead of enjoying their child, the only one they are allowed to have, they would have to care for her like they would for an invalid parent… only for much longer a time, and all while watching her suffer.

All of this can be neatly summed up by saying: rescuing the girl and saving her life would have been more costly in terms of money, pain and stress for all concerned, not the least of all the girl… should she recover sufficiently to experience such things.

I want to emphasize that the Chinese do love their children. I have classrooms full of girls who once were babies and they are still dearly loved by their parents and all of the rest of their family members. And each one of my students would have been mourned and missed and wailed over, had it been them to be mowed over by a truck in their toddlerhood. So, it is not for lack of love or consideration of human life that this one child was killed with seemingly no remorse.

While talking about this with me, some of my Western friends have said ‘This would NEVER happen here!’ That is most likely true. In America it is not common practice to run down little girls or little boys and decide his/her rescue as a matter of practicality. What would most likely happen is that, no matter how much the child will suffer and no matter how it impacts the quality of the parents’ life, the driver’s life or the child’s life, that child will be put back together. He/she will undergo painful surgeries and tortuous rehabilitation, live with the psychological trauma of being handicapped and, in spite of that wondrously leveling document called the Americans With Disabilities Act, be discriminated against.

When my friends who were discussing this with me exclaimed that such callous disregard for human life would NEVER happen in a ‘civilized’ country, it almost hurt my heart to remind him that America has one of the highest rates of crimes against children in the civilized world. China does not even have a word for pedophilia, because such a phenomenon does not exist here. Nor does China have an agency called Child Protective Services because, as a rule, children are protected and not abused or mistreated.

And we can go on and on about what would happen or never happen in either country: rape is virtually unheard of in China while in America 1 in 4 women fall victim to this crime. China ranks as one of the world’s lowest listed countries for murder, and… we all know where America sits on that list. Drug crimes, hate crimes, theft, ect… all similar statistics: huge disparity between America and China. Although, theft in China is on the rise (see next post).

All of this makes me sound like I’m very much pro-China and anti-America. That is not the case and this is not a post about which country is better or worse. I’m just highlighting societal differences with regard to this incident and the comments made by some of my conversants. It also makes me sound as though I would watch that video of a little girl being mowed down in the street while munching popcorn and cheering the driver for backing up and running over her again. No my friends, that is decidedly not the case. I deplore the fact that this child died on that day, just like I deplore the fact that hundreds of other children died on that day of malnutrition and/or starvation, malaria, cholera, dengue fever, drive-by shootings or abuse. This ONE child’s fate is a tragedy, to be sure, but so are all the others. So why make ONE child’s fate a reflection of an entire culture when other societies are absolved of that exercise in judgement?

What ended up happening, as shown in the news here, is that the driver, mortified and forever plagued by the ghost of his deed, has visited with the parents and shared in their grief. And, the parents have forgiven the driver immediately upon his admission of guilt, and then have taken more than half the blame, damning themselves for not watching their daughter more closely and taking better care of her. The driver will pay for all funeral expenses, in addition to paying the family compensation. No criminal charges for anyone. The Law figures both sides have suffered enough.

Perhaps, later on, if the parents have recovered enough and their marriage is not shattered by this single act of devastation, they might have another child.

Hear me well on this though: the Chinese were outraged over this incident too. After first hearing of this incident from one my friends in America via email, I put the question to my sophomores for discussion. Their attitude was in fact similar to the West’s: that driver should be punished, not just have to pay compensation to the family. However, strangely enough, they did not speculate at all on the parents’ inattentiveness as a cause to their daughter’s fate. It is simply accepted here that children will be watched out for… except in this case.