Reggie Littlejohn, a personal friend, representing the China Aid Association, spoke at the E.U. Parliament this week, addressing the organization about China’s “One-Child Policy” and was received with great interest and even enthusiasm. Please feel free to send her timely and important address, with source references to anyone interested in God-given human life! Mrs. Littlejohn is still in Europe and has given me permission to post her E.U. Address. – Jerry
- Provincial Regulations. According to the 2008 State Department UNFPA Determination, official provincial regulations mandate forced abortion for out of plan pregnancies. See, for example, the Hunan Province Population and Family Planning Regulations, Article 22, which states, in pertinent part: “. . . Pregnancies that do not comply with the legal requirements for childbirths shall be terminated in a timely manner.”[iv]
- Gao Xiao Duan. A former family planning official, Gao Xiao Duan, brought to the West documentary evidence that the coercive implementation of the One-Child Policy is mandated by Beijing. Her testimony and documentation are in the United States Congressional Record.[v]
- Chen Guangcheng. Blind activist Chen Guangcheng exposed the mass forced abortions and forced sterilizations in Linyi County, Shandong Province, in 2005. For this he is currently serving a four-year prison sentence. On April 30, 2006, Time Magazine named him in its list of “2006’s Top 100 People Who Shape Our World,” in the category of “Heroes and Pioneers.”[vi] In June of 2007, according to an Amnesty International report, he was severely beaten in prison and denied medical attention.[vii]
If it is true, as the CCP contends, that officials who perform forced abortions and forced sterilizations are breaking the law, then why aren’t the Family Planning Officials in jail? Why, instead, is Chen Guangcheng in jail, for reporting these abuses? If the One Child Policy is truly voluntary, then why doesn’t the Chinese Communist Party free Chen Guangcheng immediately?
The Chinese Communist Party boasts that it has “prevented” 400 million births since 1979 through its One Child Policy.[viii] This figure is greater than the entire population of the United States. Further, the top population official in China recently stated that the Chinese Communist Party has no plans to change the one-child policy for at least another ten years.[ix]
The One-Child Policy has given rise to many other human rights violations, including the following ten issues:
- Gendercide. Because of the traditional preference for boys, most of the aborted babies are girls. There are 117 boys born for every 100 girls born in China, and in some areas the number is as high as 130 boys born for every 100 girls. Due to the availability of ultrasound technology, sex-selective abortion is practiced and tens of millions of girls are aborted.[x]
- Human Trafficking and Sexual Slavery. Because of abortion and infanticide of baby girls, there are an estimated 20 to 30 million Chinese men who will never marry because their future wives were terminated before they were born. This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery, not only in China, but all over Asia. According to a statement by the United States Department of State, “Women and children are trafficked into [China] from North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Mongolia and Thailand.”[xi]
- Stolen Children. A film just came out called China’s Stolen Children, documenting the burgeoning black market in stolen children – 70,000 a year — created by the One-Child Policy.[xii]
- “Illegal” children. After the earthquake in Sichuan Province in May of this year, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to comfort bereaved parents by offering three things. First, if you lost your only child, they said, the government will issue a birth permit allowing you to have another child. Second, if you’ve been sterilized, the government will send a physician to attempt to reverse the sterilization. Third, if your legal child was killed, then your illegal second child can become legal, and hence eligible for education and healthcare.[xiii] These offers of help also constitute a series of startling admissions. First, the Chinese Communist Party has unwittingly admitted that Chinese citizens must have a birth permit to be allowed to give birth. Second, they have admitted that sterilization occurs under the One-Child Policy. Third, they have admitted that that there is a whole population of “illegal” second children, who are not eligible for education or health care. Indeed, these “illegal children” have no official existence, which will likely prevent them from marrying or obtaining employment later in life. A lawyer representing parents of children killed in the earthquake has been arrested.[xiv]
- “Forsaken” Children. Recent research done by the China Aid Association has revealed that there are children who have been abandoned by their parents in the aftermath of a divorce. When the divorced parents re-marry and would like to have a child with their new spouses, they are only allowed one child, so they may abandon the child of their first marriage. These children are left destitute and have been called “forsaken.”
- Rioting and Violence. In May of 2007, thousands of villagers in Guangxi province clashed violently with police after a two-month crackdown against violators of the One-Child Policy. According to villagers, family planning officials “chased people down the streets and into the fields . . . men and women were rounded up for forced sterilizations” and women were forcibly aborted. Those with second children were fined heavily, and if they could not pay, their valuables were confiscated, and in some cases, their homes were destroyed. The villagers responded by breaking into a government building, smashing computers and setting the building on fire. There were inconsistent reports of death and injuries during the riot.[xv]
- Health problems due to forced sterilizations. When the Family Planning Police sterilize women for violating the One Child Policy, these sterilizations are most often not performed by highly trained gynecological surgeons, especially in the countryside. Often, there are infections and other complications. Many women have complained that their health was destroyed by these sterilizations.
- Female suicide. Forced abortion traumatizes women. In the West, post-abortive counseling is becoming available to help women deal with the physical and emotional aftermath of having an abortion. No so in China. According to the World Health Organization, China has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world, and it is the only nation in which more women than men kill themselves. [xvi] Congressman Christopher Smith, who has taken a leading role in exposing the atrocities of the One-Child Policy through Congressional hearings and other means, stated, “According to the most recent State Department Human Rights Report, one consequence of ‘[China’s] birth limitation policies’ is that 56% of the world’s female suicides occur in China, which is five times the world average, and approximately 500 suicides by women per day.”[xvii]
- Aging Population. Further, the One-Child Policy has created the intractable problem of the aging of the Chinese population. Soon on the demographic horizon, after the year 2030, the proportion of retirees to working people will increase to the point that the shrunken youthful population will not be able to sustain the retirees in their old age. [xviii] Nor does China offer Social Security. The CCP has not unveiled any plan on how they will handle this problem.
- Tibetans and Uighurs. Even though, as ethnic minorities, Tibetans and Uighurs are supposed to be exempt from the One-Child Policy, it has been reported that forced abortion and sterilization are rampant.[xix]
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which China is a signatory, will celebrate its 60th Anniversary on December 10, 2008.[xx] China’s coercive enforcement of its One-Child Policy violates the spirit and the letter of this Universal Declaration, which protects the rights of women, children, and the family.[xxi] Furthermore, the One-Child Policy violates provisions of the “Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women” (CEDAW), which China ratified in September 1980,[xxii] and also the “Declaration of the Fourth World Conference on Women” held in Beijing in 1995.[xxiii]
“A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members, and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.”[xxiv] There is no more intimate part of a woman’s body than her womb. For the Chinese Communist Party to function as “womb police,” wielding the very power of life and death, is a violation of a woman’s innermost being – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Men, also, are deeply affected by this violence and loss of control, as are children. For China to enter its destiny as a nation, the Chinese Communist Party must turn from killing and oppressing the weakest and most vulnerable members of its society, and instead embrace and protect them. The freedom to choose to give birth is the freedom upon which all life is based.
May 21, 2007. See also, Ni, Ching-Ching. “China’s One-Child Policy Spurs Riots.” Los Angeles Times. [Online] Available http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/24/world/fg-riots24, May 24, 2007.
According to a statement by Congressman Christopher Smith, Pacific T. Kumar, Amnesty International’s Advocacy Director for Asia and the Pacific, said acts perpetrated by certain population control officials in China amount to torture:
· Article 12. “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence . . . Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Coercive governmental control over the number and spacing of children is an “arbitrary interference with privacy [and] family.” Destruction of the homes because of pregnancy is an “arbitrary interference with . . . home.”
· Article 16 (3). “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” Forced abortion, forced sterilization, detention and the destruction of homes hardly constitute protection of the family by the State.
· Article 25 (2). “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same protection.” The family planning regulation requiring the abortion of all children conceived out of wedlock violates the protection of children born out of wedlock. See endnote (i), above.
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