Ten children with disabilities orphaned by the Sichuan earthquake are still waiting to be adopted nearly one year after the devastating tragedy.
The children, all aged under 11 years, were among 325 boys and girls in Mianyang left without parents after the magnitude-8.0 earthquake struck on May 12 last year.
The children are being cared for in an orphanage after the other 315 were either adopted out or sent to live with relatives.
Among them is 11-year-old Zhao Guodong, who is mentally handicapped and suffers slight epilepsy.
His mother and father were buried under house debris in Beichuan, one of several counties in Mianyang.
Speaking ahead of the earthquake's one-year anniversary, Zhao's words are scattered and contradictory.
"I miss my mum a lot," he said, before adding a moment later: "I don't miss my mum at all."
Zhao has several family pictures in his schoolbag that he will take out and look at for hours when he thinks no one is watching.
Dong Yan, a teacher at the orphanage, said Zhao was retarded and he did not mean that he did not miss his mother.
Orphanage doctor Zhao Jiade said his mental condition was the reason he had not been adopted.
Zhao said the boy was probably born with the condition but that it was made worse by the loss of his parents.
The other children in the orphanage include 9-year-old Yang Shuhao, who suffers from the neuromuscular disorder myasthenia gravis, and 7-year-old Tang Junhao, who has cerebral palsy.
The other 7 children are all under 6 and are also handicapped.
Zhang Ping, orphanage director, said the institution initially had more than 50 earthquake orphans but that most of those children were now in the care of relatives.
"The remaining children are disabled, most of them mentally ill, and nobody wants them," she said.
Zhang said many people had expressed willingness to adopt an earthquake orphan, but all wanted healthy ones.
"But we don't have any healthy ones left," she said.
Wang Li, an official with the Mianyang civil affairs bureau who is in charge of adoption, said that two of the 325 earthquake orphans were adopted separately by families in Beijing and Guangzhou.
Less than 10 children were put in social welfare institutions because they were aged over 16 and a group of 65 were adopted by an organization in Shandong province.
More than 200 children were in the care of relatives, Wang said.
Chen Kefu, deputy director of the provincial civil affairs department, said that 12 out of 650 earthquake orphans in Sichuan had been adopted by new families.
Foreigners are not allowed to adopt earthquake orphans.
Wang said relatives were often unwilling to send the orphaned children away, particularly in Beichuan, where most of the inhabitants are of the Qiang ethnic minority group.
"Families tend to keep the children close to the tribe to prevent them losing the ethnic culture," Wang said.
"Most of these children are also unwilling to leave their hometowns," Zhang said.
Under current law, children older than 10 must give their permission to be adopted.
At the orphanage last week, Zhao said he would like to be able to move to a new home.
"It's definitely better for the children if they are adopted. They have better care and a better education," Wang said.
"Even if they're handicapped they still have the right to be adopted."
Zhang said the handicapped orphans did not have to worry about their food and clothes but they faced an uncertain future. "They have difficulty learning in regular classrooms in schools," she said. "If they continue staying here, they will only end up in social welfare institutes."
Source: China Daily
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