To Add to the Tragedy in China....

As if the tragedy we have seen in the news in the wake of the earthquake in China is not enough, Human Rights Watch researcher and analyst Kay Seok writes about another group of children suffering from the loss of a parent....and a group of children whose suffering has flown below the media radar.

China shares a border with North Korea and in a city in the Jilin province, there are many children who have North Korean mothers. And yet, these children cannot even be registered and given a legal identity because their mothers are North Korean refugees. If their mothers are discovered, they will be separated from their children and repatriated. If these women return to North Korean they face a lot of persecution, as if the fact that they are separated from their children is not persecution enough. There have been more attempts to crackdown on these refugees as the Beijing Olympics draw closer....

Despite China's international obligation towards refugees, as well as their law that declares that all children regardless of their legal status are entitled to nine years of free and mandatory education, schools demand evidence that children are legally registered in the country..... So parents are unable to get any services for their children as well as basic education. If they want to, the mothers have to leave...or risk getting caught and repatriated.

For more on this injustice refer to the article written by Kay Seok here.

Tragedy in China

As China mourns its victims, so too I mourn those who lost their lives in this earthquake and its aftermath.....It is too much to speak of in words.....the pictures you have seen on the news, on the internet convey more than this blog post ever could. CNN 360's podcast had a clip of the search for survivors as they dug through the rubble of a school. I could scarcely breathe.... So this blog post ends here.....as I think of those children, those victims, those families, communities, and villages that have suffered in the wake of this disaster....

BBC's news on China's mourning....

Sign the Petition for Darfur by July 20th!!

Sign the petition to urge China to take action and stop the violence in Darfur!

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As I've blogged before, China plays a significant role in Sudan's politics. Take a look at my previous blog on this subject. The above link connects you directly to the petition to urge China to take action. Read it and sign the petition by July 20th. And urge your friends to sign it too.