Shijiazhuang, China, Jan 19 - Shivering in icy fog, a band of weary men waited outside a court in this north Chinese city on Friday to see what justice would come for their children, sick or dead after drinking milk tainted by a chemical.
The court is the site of trials of executives from the Sanlu dairy group and city officials, accused of allowing the sale of milk adulterated with melamine or for covering up the scandal. The toxic milk powder killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000 last year.
Parents, desperate to know the verdict from the closed-door proceedings, gathered outside after word spread of an impending verdict.
"So many of the affected parents hope for the death penalty," said Zhao Lianhai, father of a sick three year-old. Zhao gave up his job to campaign for redress.
Melamine, a cheap additive used to bamboozle quality checks, is a chemical used in plastics, flame retardants and cement. It was added to watered down or sub-standard milk because its high nitrogen levels mimicked protein in nutrition tests.
Sanlu failed to report cases of Chinese children developing kidney stones and other complications from drinking their milk months before the scandal broke in September.
The former general manager of the now shuttered firm, Tian Wenhua, faces charges of producing and selling fake or substandard products. The maximum sentence for this is life imprisonment, state media says, but one paper implied that if found guilty she could be executed.
For some parents, even that will not be enough.
Beside Zhou stood a 28 year-old farmer, with a hand-painted sign saying "Sanlu milk powder give me back my child". Hou Rongbo's son died on January 6, a week before his first birthday.
"He drank Sanlu milk from the day he was born, because his mother had problems producing breast milk," he told Reuters.
"He had blood in his urine at two months but the doctor said there was nothing wrong. He got flu in September and the news about Sanlu came out the same day we took him into hospital.
Checks showed he had kidney stones, the tell-tale symptom among poisoned children. But he also had leukaemia, so he is not listed among the Sanlu victims.
Hou is convinced the illnesses are related, or that the melamine at least worsened the leukaemia.
"My child is already dead, what do I have to lose?" he said, with tears in his eyes. The hoped for verdict in the closed-door case was not handed down on Friday, but Hou vowed to return.
INVESTIGATION, COMPENSATION
Zhao hopes to unite affected parents on websites with names like "poisoned milk.com", although it can be risky to take on the stability-obsessed Communist Party.
The parents of the first Chinese child killed by tainted milk formula have received $29,000 compensation, state media said on Friday, with the government hoping the payments and a trial will quell popular anger. But Zhou has collected files on six children he says died from the tainted milk who are not on the government list.
Many others are struggling to find treatment, he adds, although Beijing promised free treatment when the scandal broke.
"Everywhere we went they told us to go somewhere else, and now they say the period for free treatment has past," said Zhou Jin, a migrant worker whose one-year-old daughter is still sick.
He has spent his meagre savings, borrowed from friends and family and says all he has been offered by the government is the small amount for "mildly affected" children.
"For her sickness the compensation is just 2,000 yuan, which won't even cover her medical expenses. I will not accept it."