Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
March 20, 2017
Lawyers sue Chinese authorities for not getting rid of smog
POLLUTION PUSHBACK. Commuters, some
wearing masks, walk to a subway station during the
evening rush hour in Beijing. The city’s average read-
ing of the tiny particulate matter PM2.5 — considered
a good gauge of air pollution — is seven times what
the World Health Organization considers safe. A group
of Chinese lawyers is suing the governments of Beijing
and its surrounding regions for not doing enough to
get rid of smog. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
By Louise Watt
The Associated Press
EIJING — Lawyer Cheng Hai has
an itemized list of compensation
demands from Beijing authorities
over the city’s smog: 65 yuan ($9) for
having to buy face masks, 100 yuan ($15)
for seeing a doctor for a sore throat, and
9,999 yuan ($1,500) for emotional distress.
Fed up with what they consider
halfhearted efforts to fight air pollution,
Cheng and like-minded lawyers are
putting China’s legal system to the test by
suing the governments of the capital and
its surrounding regions.
“Some people might think that air
pollution is inevitable with economic
development, but they are wrong,” said
Cheng, 64. “We have laws to protect air
quality, and major pollution can be
avoided if they are fully enforced.”
The lawsuits demonstrate the mounting
frustration of China’s middle class at the
country’s notoriously bad air, a topic that
is expected to be discussed at the upcoming
annual meeting of the country’s parlia-
ment three years after Premier Li Keqiang
declared a “war on pollution” at the same
event.
The dissatisfaction comes even as
authorities in the capital are closing
factories, getting rid of coal-fired boilers,
and taking older, heavier-polluting
vehicles off the road.
Official data show those measures are
having some effect, with Beijing showing
year-on-year improvements since 2013.
Yet the city’s average reading of the tiny
particulate matter PM2.5 — considered a
good gauge of air pollution — is still seven
times what the World Health Organiza-
tion considers safe.
“We are the victims of smog and we are
entitled to ask for an apology and com-
pensation from the government,” said
another of the lawyers, Yu Wensheng, 50,
from Beijing.
The suits, which accuse authorities of
failing to deal effectively with the smog,
are important to show that the
government is not above the law, said Yu.
“If the government is not restricted by
B
law, then what else can restrict it?” said
Yu, who has spent time in detention ac-
cused of supporting Hong Kong pro-de-
mocracy protests in 2014 and for speaking
up in support of detained rights lawyers.
Along with Beijing, the group has
attempted to sue the neighboring province
of Hebei and the port city of Tianjin. The
region generally suffers the worst
pollution in China and forms a front line in
the central government’s battle against
the scourge.
The lawyers say their cases are more
about drawing attention to government
inaction rather than winning a settlement.
China is grappling with serious pollu-
tion resulting from three decades of
breakneck growth that vastly improved
living standards for many, but took a
disastrous toll on the environment.
As people became more aware of the
health issues associated with smog, the
declaration of a “war on pollution” at the
National People’s Congress in 2014
resulted in measures to reduce pollutants
in the air, including capping coal con-
sumption. However, a particularly heavy
bout of smog at the beginning of this year
still triggered pollution “red alerts” in
more than 20 cities.
Beijing plans to spend $2.7 billion on
fighting air pollution this year, part of
which would be used to close or upgrade
more than 3,000 polluting factories, re-
place the use of coal with clean energy on
the outskirts of the city, and phase out
300,000 high-polluting older vehicles, ac-
cording to the city’s acting mayor, Cai Qi.
Despite efforts to enlist the public in the
anti-pollution struggle, China’s authori-
tarian Communist government heavily
discourages protests and other forms of
independent action, and at least one of the
initial five lawyers in the case appears to
have withdrawn his lawsuit under
pressure from local authorities.
The Beijing press office said the govern-
ment hadn’t received any notices about the
lawsuits and was unable to comment. The
governments of Hebei and Tianjin didn’t
respond to requests for comment.
The Ministry of Environmental Pro-
tection has been sending out inspection
teams to check on how well local govern-
ments are implementing smog control
measures. It was recently announced that
the lists of companies that have to halt
production during periods of heavy
pollution drawn up by three lower-level
governments under Beijing and Hebei
included companies that were already no
longer operating.
A Beijing court has already twice
rejected attempts by the lawyers to file
cases, while a court in Hebei province’s
capital, Shijiazhuang, has yet to respond
to a case filed more than two months ago.
Similar attempts to file suits in previous
years have also been derailed, and while a
change in the law has allowed some
environmental non-governmental organi-
zations to bring cases against polluters
since 2015, they are discouraged to do so by
the high costs of investigating and proving
environmental damage, and potential
threats and harassment from those they’re
suing.
Wang Canfa, the director of a center that
helps people bring lawsuits relating to
pollution, said it would be difficult for the
plaintiffs to establish a link between the
governments’ actions and the harm they
have suffered.
“In this circumstance, the governments
are not the ones that inflict harm, rather it
is the companies that discharge emissions,
and individuals who drive cars, who are
the polluters,” said Wang, who teaches at
the China University of Political Science
and Law.
Still, the lawyers appear to feel it’s
worth the risks and frustrations to make
their point.
Another of them, Lu Tingge, who filed
the Hebei case, said his mother suffers
respiratory illnesses and the pollution
makes it difficult for her to breathe.
He’s asking for 10 yuan ($1.50) in com-
pensation for masks, 5,000 yuan ($730) for
“spiritual damage,” and an official apology
for the harm to his life and work.
“I know my chances of winning are
small,” said Lu, 47. “But I just want to
make people understand that the
government bears the main responsibility
for dealing with smog and air pollution.”
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing contributed
to this report. See related story on page 11.
Stanford doctors train EMTs in a country with few paramedics
By Binaj Gurubacharya
The Associated Press
ATHMANDU, Nepal — When
Subhash Dhungel’s father passed
out, the panicked road engineer
called for an ambulance. To the Nepali
man’s horror, the vehicle arrived without a
trained medical technician to help his
unconscious father as they drove to a
Kathmandu hospital.
It wasn’t an isolated case. Nepal is
woefully short of ambulances and trained
emergency medical technicians (EMTs)
are even rarer. Ambulances are mainly
used as a means to simply transport
patients to hospitals.
Now a group of doctors from Stanford
University have trained four dozen EMTs
in the hope they can gradually transform
the Himalayan nation’s emergency
services.
The team trained 48 EMTs for 12 weeks
from December to February. The last such
training they did in Nepal was in 2011.
“It is helpful to have people get to the
hospital quickly, but there is no difference
between the ambulance and a taxi if the
person is not really trained to use equip-
ment to save lives on the way,” said Rebec-
ca Walker, a Stanford University emer-
gency medicine professor and team leader.
The trainees learned about providing
first aid, treating trauma and heart
patients, and even delivering babies.
“There is little or no public awareness
about EMTs in Nepal and ambulances in
K
Nepal generally do not have oxygen
bottles, back boards, or any trained
EMTs,” said Binod Thapa, a critical-care
manager who underwent the training
despite having already worked for 17 years
at a prominent hospital in Kathmandu.
Only three private hospitals and one
nonprofit group, the Nepal Ambulance
Service, in the nation of 26.4 million people
have ambulances with EMTs on board.
The capital, Kathmandu, is routinely
gridlocked in massive traffic jams and
mountains make up most of the country’s
terrain, so it takes a long time for ambu-
lances to reach hospitals. A lack of trained
staff on board to perform emergency
life-saving procedures greatly decreases
the chance of survival for patients.
Dhungel said his family had expected to
find at least one trained medical techni-
cian in the ambulance who could perform
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
There was none.
EMT TRAINING. An ambulance is seen parked
outside a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal is
woefully short of ambulances and trained emergency
medical technicians (EMTs) who can man them. Now
a group of doctors from Stanford University are train-
ing four dozen EMTs in the hope they can gradually
transform the Himalayan nation’s emergency services.
(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
“Eventually we reached the hospital. It
was OK, but imagine the situation if
somebody really needs CPR,” he said,
describing his father’s emergency in 2010.
The prospect of having trained emer-
gency technicians on board ambulances is
a huge leap for Nepal’s capital where until
a few years ago there was no centralized
number to call for an ambulance, leaving
people to dial individual hospitals in the
hope they had a vehicle available.
It was only in 2011 that the Nepal
Ambulance Service began operations in
Kathmandu with a three-digit phone
number and five ambulances.
“Now we have realized the importance of
having EMTs who can make the difference
between a patient living and dying before
reaching the hospital,” said Sita Koirala,
who works at a community health center
in a mountain village northwest of Kath-
mandu and was part of the training.
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