Tabloid's use of Chinese baby's picture criticised

The Irish Mirror has been condemned for using a photograph of a dead baby on its front page yesterday.

The newspaper carried a large photograph of a Chinese baby girl abandoned on a street in central China. It also carried six similar photographs inside. In the photographs, passers-by appeared to be ignoring the body.

International Orphan Aid Ireland accused the newspaper of using the photograph with the sole intention of selling more newspapers.

The IOAI chairwoman, Ms Sally Keaveney, said everyone knew that children were being abandoned in China, because of its one-child policy. "It didn't need the Irish Mirror to come out with a totally insensitive photograph of a little baby's body lying on the ground to show this."

Ms Keaveney said if the newspaper was genuinely concerned about the issue, it could have been portrayed in a more sensitive and balanced way, without the photograph.

She said the Chinese orphanages had greatly improved their conditions in recent years and the government was putting more money into childcare. "It's a difficult situation because you've got 1.2 billion people in China, you've got an enormous country so therefore you're going to have an enormous problem." If Ireland had a one-child policy, we would have a similar problem on a smaller scale, she said.

Yesterday, the Mirror Group of newspapers defended its use of the image. "Those who criticise our use of this shocking image are hiding their heads in the sand as much as the people who walked by the poor dead baby girl's body," a Mirror spokesman said.

"It is time we all stopped ignoring the brutal reality of China's one child policy and these photographs will enhance public awareness of the situation better than a million words."

The Chinese Embassy in Dublin last night robustly defended its government's children's rights record. In a statement the Embassy said mistreatment and trafficking of children would be "severely punished".

"Furthermore, great efforts have also been made to safeguard children's right to subsistence and development in China. The whole society has been mobilised to help disabled girls, children in single parent families and in poverty," the statement said

"Any act of maltreating, drowning and discarding children is outlawed and forbidden. Crimes such as mistreatment and trafficking of children will be severely punished," it added.

The rate of infant mortality had fallen by 31.8 per cent to less than 4.2 per cent between 1991 and 1998 in tandem with an ambitious and far-reaching vaccination and immunisation programme, the embassy said.

Beijing's strict birth control laws were vital to the development of quality education and health services in China, the statement said.

Miriam Donohoe adds from Beijing There was no reaction from the Chinese government yesterday to the publication of the pictures of the baby girl in the foreign press.

The state-controlled print or broadcast media made no reference to the pictures either.