Saturday, October 22, 2005

Chen Guangcheng's Activism Helping Expose China's Latest Largest Atrocity

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[img]http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2005/08/26/PH2005082602079.jpg[/img]
Blind Activist Chen Guangcheng's Activism Helping Expose What 'Time magazine
described the operation as "one of the most brutal mass sterilization and
abortion campaigns in years."'

China's Second Thoughts About Family Planning
Amid New Doubts, Harsh Policies Linger

BEIJING, OCT. 22, 2005 (Zenit.org).- China's fierce demographic control
policies have exacted a heavy toll during the last quarter-century. An
overview of the consequences appeared in an article in the Sept. 15 issue of
the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years," authored by
Therese Hesketh and Zhu Wei Xing, noted that the regulations cover matters
ranging from family size, late marriage and the spacing of children. The
term "one-child policy" is, in fact, misleading in that it is applied only
to a part of the population, primarily government workers and those living
in urban areas. Rural families are generally allowed a second child, five
years after the birth of the first, especially if the first was a girl.

The restrictions are underpinned a system of rewards and penalties, which
are administrated by local officials and which vary widely. They can include
economic incentives for compliance, as well as substantial fines, including
confiscation of belongings and dismissal from work, for noncompliance.

Contraception and abortion are the backbone of the implementing the policy.
Long-term measures are favored, with intrauterine devices and sterilizations
together accounting for more than 90% of contraceptive methods used since
the mid-1980s. The authors note that the majority of women are offered no
choice in contraception.

Hesketh and Zhu note that authorities claim that the policy has prevented
250 million to 300 million births. The authors caution that population
statistics in China are known to be subject to government manipulation. The
total fertility rate -- the mean number of children born per woman --
decreased from 2.9 in 1979 to 1.7 in 2004, with a rate of 1.3 in urban areas
and just under 2.0 in rural areas.

Girls eliminated

One consequence of the family planning restrictions has been the growing
disproportion between male and female births. The proportion of male live
births to female live births ranges from 1.03 to 1.07 in industrialized
countries. In China the ratio was 1.06 in 1979, but climbed to 1.17 by 2001.

Sex-selective abortion, facilitated by the use of ultrasound images to find
out the sex of unborn children, accounts for a large proportion of the
female babies killed. And while infanticide is thought to be rare, sick
female infants are known to receive less medical care. The growing scarcity
of females has already resulted in kidnapping and trafficking of women for
marriage, and could well be a threat to the country's stability in coming
years, according to some analysts.

The low birthrate has set the stage for a rapid aging of China's population.
The percentage of those over age 65 was 5% in 1982 and now stands at 7.5%.
It might top 15% by 2025. These figures are low compared to industrialized
nations. But the lack of an adequate pensions system in China means that
most of the elderly depend on their children for support, leading to concern
over how the ever-smaller numbers of children will cope in coming years.

Authorities have tacitly acknowledged some of the problems caused by the
family planning system, by adopting a more flexible policy in various
regions. A more-open admission came at the start of this year, Reuters
reported Jan. 6. On the occasion of China's population reaching the 1.3
billion mark, an editorial in the China Daily supported the one-child policy
but conceded: "Admittedly, the family planning policy has gone awry in some
places."

Reuters also reported the same day that China was taking further steps to
avoid the selective abortion of females. The news agency said that
government data showed 119 boys were being born for every 100 girls.
Sex-selective abortion was already illegal, but the new plans involve a
further tightening of regulations, including banning the use of ultrasound
machines to detect the sex of fetuses.

Authorities, however, made it clear that they will not countenance
opposition to family planning policies. The Associated Press reported Jan. 5
that a Shanghai woman, Mao Hengfeng, was sentenced to an additional three
months in a labor camp because of her opposition to the policies. She was
already serving a one-and-a-half year sentence for her campaign to abolish
the family planning policies.

Repression intensifies

Recent events in the eastern province of Shandong indicated just how harsh
the family planning policies still are. On Sept. 7 the Washington Post
reported that Chen Guangcheng, a blind peasant who campaigned against the
use of forced sterilization and abortion, had been seized by authorities.
Chen was visiting Beijing while preparing a lawsuit to challenge the abuses.

Chen, who lives in Linyi, a city to the southeast of the capital, had
protested against local measures that required parents with two children to
be sterilized and women pregnant with a third child to undergo abortions.
Three days later the Washington Post reported that Chen had been confined to
his home by authorities and couldn't receive visitors.

Time magazine in its Sept. 19 issue also reported on the events in the
province. The article graphically described the case of a forced abortion of
a 9-month-old unborn child being carried by Li Juan.

The article explained that family planning policies were eased at the
national level in 2002, allowing parents to have extra children, so long as
they paid big fines. But in many cases local Communist Party officials still
maintain the old, harsher restrictions and attitudes.

Faced with criticisms by provincial leaders that the birthrate was too high,
local officials launched a campaign in March to eliminate what they
considered to be the extra births. Time magazine described the operation as
"one of the most brutal mass sterilization and abortion campaigns in years."
In one county alone at least 7,000 people were forced to undergo
sterilization between March and July. According to Time, several villagers
were beaten to death for trying to help family members avoid sterilization.

Officials also resorted to arresting family members of women who did not
agree to be sterilized, the Chicago Tribute reported Oct. 2. And in one case
a family was forced to pay a fine and fees equivalent to $617, more than an
average farmer makes in a year in the province.

The Washington Post followed up the matter with a report Sept. 20. The
newspaper said that officials in the city of Linyi had been dismissed for
abuses committed while enforcing the one-child policy. But the newspaper
also cited Jian Tianyong, a local lawyer involved in a lawsuit against the
officials, as saying that only a few low-level officials had been punished,
leaving the party leaders untouched.

The recent events have been criticized by the human rights organization
Amnesty International. In an Oct. 14 press release Amnesty started by noting
it has not taken an official position on China's "birth control policy." But
it is concerned about the human rights violations resulting from the
coercive methods used to apply the policy.

Referring to forced abortion and sterilization, and the forcible detention
of people, Amnesty declared that it considers such actions "to be cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment amounting to torture."

Code: ZE05102205

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