CHINA'S CHILDREN

IT is a rare occasion when television makes an impact in the manner of Channel 4's The Dying Rooms. It is now 14 months since the documentary: was first broadcast, and eight months since its sequel, Return To The Dying Rooms, in which hidden cameras were again smuggled into Chinese State run orphanages to report the apparent depravity of a system in which toddlers were tied to potties, strapped to beds and, most harrowing of all, apparently left to starve in the eponymous Dying Rooms.

They were, said the documentaries' makers, the victims of Chinese State policy, a fully active, secret regime of infanticide.

According to two Irish aid coordinators recently returned from China, however, the allegations made in the two films are "wholly exaggerated, and almost completely without substance".

"The documentaries took on a slant that distorted the reality to a vast extent," says James Dillon, chairman of Health Action Overseas (HAO). "When we went out we saw the orphanage in Shanghai that the programmes alleged was where children were starved to death and brutally mistreated. It simply was not the case. The standards were far from ideal but the children were not mistreated. There was more than a little poetic licence taken by the makers of the documentaries."

Dillon, along with a project development officer at Health Action Overseas, Gerard Byrne, travelled out to Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government. Formerly known as Babies of Romania, the organisation was formed in 1990 in response to the inadequacies of the Romanian childcare system, and now has 65 care workers based in orphanages there. Both Dillon and Byrne were eager to apply their Romanian experiences to the Chinese system and so approached the government there, aided by Joan Burton, Minister of State for Overseas Development Aid, and the Chinese embassy in Dublin. They returned to Ireland 10 days ago from a wide ranging, two week fact finding mission.

A year is a long time when virtually every human rights organisation in the world is breathing down your neck. It could be argued that in an attempt to corroborate their immediate dismissal of the documentaries allegations, the Chinese authorities swiftly turned their attention to cleaning up their act and then invited foreign aid agencies in to see for themselves how the documentaries were, in the words of the Chinese Ambassador to Ireland, Ms Huijan Fan, mere "fabrication". Indeed, in a country with an estimated 40,000 orphanages, could not the HAO delegation have simply been guided towards an elite selection?

"I accept that the orphanages that we saw were generally the better ones: the officials themselves told us that during our visit," Byrne says. "But our interest and background is in training people to look after children and adults, and so we asked to see the four main training centres. It is from these that we can work most effectively by sending Irish volunteers out to train Chinese carers who are posted from the centres right across the country.

"One of these centres is the Shanghai orphanage with the so called dying rooms that featured so extensively in the documentaries - it is impossible to believe that what we saw there was the product of only a few months work."

Dillon agrees: "We have worked extensively with children in Eastern Europe with all levels of mental difficulties. You can dress a child up, scrub them clean, line them up but you cannot make them interact. When we first went out to Romania, we found children tied to beds, bottle fed up, to the age of 14, the food running through them, lying in their own, faeces, and we had staff there explaining why this was wholly justified. It took us five years to get some of those children to so much as sit on a chair.

"The children we encountered in China were interacting in ways exactly appropriate to their age and expected emotional development. When you pick up a child that has been damaged in the ways the documentaries suggested, they respond in one of two ways. Either they cling and will not let go, or they will be absolutely terrified. These children simply did not react like that, and it is not possible to achieve that kind of progress in a year."

Both men maintain that they were not stage managed by the Chinese government. "We changed our itinerary when we got there but we didn't have an agenda in going and they knew this. They knew our background in Eastern Europe and so were entirely amenable to our requests," says Dillon.

"We were non judgmental in our approach," Byrne adds. "Our only interest was in sorting out the welfare of the children, nothing further. The system is in desperate need of extensive financial input and training and it is on account of this that the system is in such disrepair. We are an independent organisation, with no hidden agenda. The children are the reason for our involvement in all this - if anything whatsoever appeared to endanger them, we'd have no reason to hide it."

But how can there be such contradictory accounts of what's going on? China is not a country renowned for either its human rights record nor its freedom of information - as Conor O'Clery reported only last week, the authorities have severely curtailed the flow of information on the Internet in what is viewed as an attempt to restrict access to both foreign media, Amnesty International and other similar human rights organisations. Should HAO be successful in implementing its education programme in China, it is unlikely to be achieved by contradicting the official line or denouncing the country's childcare policy to the Western media.

"It is a very sensitive area," says Sally Keaveney, a founder member of International Orphan Aid Ireland, an organisation that was formed as a direct response to the Dying Rooms documentary. "I would have to say, though, that since we began investigating the situation in China, following the documentary, we have found that the allegations regarding infanticide as State policy are completely without truth. I disagree strongly with the suggestion that the Chinese authorities don't have the will to help - our research shows that the problems stem from lack of money, a huge population, and the birth control policy.

"The one child policy hasn't gelled with the traditional cultural belief in the importance of the male child over female. That has led to a great number of children ending up in orphanages, and there simply aren't adequate resources or trained staff. We've sent seven containers out with nappies and medicine, and the electrical and plumbing supplies for a model orphanage that will be converted from an existing building and house 350 children. We met the President, Mrs Robinson, last week and she was delighted to hear how much of a community effort it is.

International Orphan Aid Ireland spearheaded the recent change in law at the Supreme Court which legalised the adoption of Chinese babies. The first child is expected here in a matter of weeks; following that, more than 300 couples are expected to see their adoptions ratified. Keaveney's loyalties lie wholly with those involved in the adoption process, both here and in China. "You don't realise how journalists can jeopardise things," she warns.

Jeremy Wales, production manager on both The Dying Rooms and its sequel, dismisses the views held by James Dillon and Gerard' Byrne that the programmes were the result of what Byrne describes as people "knowing that making a film that had a positive, genuine slant on the system wouldn't win them any prizes, so they went for the most dramatic angle instead". Dillon, who was formerly a cameraman and editor for TV AM in Baghdad and Damascus, goes one step further. He suggests that "certain scenes were set up in certain light and filmed in black and white to distort the fact that there was a lot of light in the rooms they filmed in. I've been in them and I was able to take photographs of the children without even using a flash."

To this Jeremy Wales replies: "They've hung themselves there. We shot in secret, on Hi 8, which isn't exactly the clearest quality in the world.

"We brought the story to light over a year ago. It's fair to say the Chinese authorities might not have been happy with the exposure they got and might be on a PR campaign to limit the damage." But, he feels, it's too late.

Kate Blewett, co producer and director of the documentaries, who lived for 21 years in Asia, adds: "The Chinese said our documentary was a fabrication. That was at the end of January, after Return To The Dying Rooms was shown. Then on August 8th the Chinese government announced it was spending 32 billion yuan, that's $3.86 billion, on 100,000 orphans: on a problem they announced didn't exist - that was fabricated."

True Vision, the company that made the films, established the Dying Rooms Trust in the aftermath of the initial programme. Wales refutes suggestions that the funds raised by the trust have had difficulty reaching China on account of the adverse reaction there to all those involved.

"We have been getting the money in through a network of contacts in China, people in Hong Kong and some ex pats who know how it works. The money, though fully documented, cannot be traced back to us from the Chinese end - otherwise all those benefiting from it would suffer serious repercussions. We've paid for two medical missions, training, for staff and paid one orphanage's central heating bill in order to prevent 150 children dying of pneumonia. There's a lot more to come."

Dillon would like to go face to face with the film company in a televised debate on the truth as presented in the documentary and that based on his own eyewitness account of the situation. It may yet happen. Meanwhile MAO is fund raising and drawing up a training programme for discussion with the Ministry for Civil Affairs in Beijing for implementation as soon as possible. Sally Keaveney and International Orphan Aid Ireland are raising funds via their To China With Love community programme and awaiting the arrival of children for adoption. Meanwhile the makers of The Dying Rooms have just picked up another prize, this time an Emmy, for their work.

Whether or not the two Irish aid agencies are required to extend their international PR services to the Chinese authorities in order to see Chinese orphans taken care of in both Ireland and China is impossible to know. Certainly the documentary team's contribution from here on in is unlikely to extend much beyond administering the trust. As Jeremy Wales says: "I wouldn't rate too highly our chances of getting back".

Whatever your view, the issue is n the agenda in a determined and intractable manner. Perhaps there comes a time when it is simply up to us to ensure that is where it stays.