Brave but necessary as this report in the UK’s Guardian points out. Currently it is estimated that air quality issues are causing a third of the country’s deaths.
The Guardian reports…
Yu Wensheng blames only one actor: the government.
The 50-year-old lawyer recently launched an unprecedented suit against the authorities in three regions in China, claiming they have failed in their responsibilities. For a government with the motto “Serve the People”, Yu feels the officials are serving other interests by allowing nearly half a billion people to choke on toxic smog.
“Our bodies are being harmed because of the ineffectiveness of our government; because of their inaction and carelessness, we suffer,” Yu told the Guardian. “The pollution has affected my family, my son is coughing, I’m also coughing, and I feel the smog caused this. I am suing as a victim.”
Northern China is frequently blanketed with thick clouds of deadly smog that is linked to almost a third of all deaths in the country – and caused by steel plants, a heavy reliance on coal for heat and power generation, plus millions of cars. While the authorities have “declared war on pollution”, many feel progress has been slow and the region is still hit with a yearly bout of “airpocalypse”.
We have laws, regulations and systems to combat pollution, but they’re not being enforced
Cheng Hai
Yu and four other lawyers have filed cases against the governments of the capital Beijing, the neighbouring port city of Tianjin, and Hebei province, home to some of the country’s most polluted cities.
“If the authorities don’t accept the case or use some other method to dismiss it, it can only show the government has a bad attitude in the face of pressure from the citizens,” Yu says. “That would clearly show they don’t serve the citizens at all.”
Several in the group have been pressured by local branches of the justice ministry to withdraw the cases and another lawyer has already dropped out after he was visited by police in his hometown. But Yu is undeterred, having previously spent stints in detention, where he says he was tortured.
Full Report at
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/13/chinese-lawyers-suing-government-air-pollution
