[quote]knewsom wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
knewsom wrote:
… While seemingly polar opposites, the two countries are not really ALL THAT DIFFERENT when you get down to it.
Except for things like forced abortions, lack of religious freedom, oppression of Tibetans etc.
Forced abortions!? where are you getting THIS from? The one child law is merely a tax incentive. Those that can afford more, have more kids. Those that can’t, don’t register thier children. 
…[/quote]
It still happens. Don’t kid yourself. The Chinese government is bad news.
http://www.righttoliferoch.org/wforcechina.htm
Bush Administration Report Shows Forced Abortions in China, North Korea
Washington, DC – Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the annual report, “The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2002,” on conditions in 196 countries. Powell said the report reflects “the steadfast commitment of the United States to advance internationally agreed human rights principles worldwide.”
The report notes that “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Party) is the paramount source of power.” The Chinese government refused permission for independent nongovernmental organizations to monitor human rights conditions and lists as problems, “violence against women” which includes “imposition of a birth limitation policy coercive in nature that resulted in instances of forced abortion and forced sterilization.”
The report says moreover that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) worked “closely” with population control officials in China in 32 counties which employed coercive methods of population control. Despite the repeated denials of UNFPA the U.S. report states that these counties that worked with UNFPA employed “birth limitation policy, including the requirement that couples employ effective birth control methods, and enforced it through other means, such as social compensation fees.” Cooperation with such coercive population control programs resulted in the denial of U.S. funds to UNFPA.
The report also reveals a grim picture in North Korea where the report says, “Female prisoners underwent forced abortions, and in other cases babies reportedly were killed upon birth in prisons.”
The new Human Rights Reports are found at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/
U.S.: Infanticide and Forced Abortions Rampant in China
NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2004
WASHINGTON ? Despite some changes, China’s one-child family planning program remains a source of coercion, forced abortions, infanticide and perilously imbalanced boy-girl ratios, State Department officials said Tuesday.
Testimony before the House International Relations Committee focused on a Shanghai woman who, since her second pregnancy in the late 1980s, has been assigned to psychiatric wards, coerced into an abortion, and removed from her job. She is reportedly subject to torture in a labor camp.
Mao Hengfeng, said Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., “is the most egregious example of China’s mistreatment of women who do not comply with China’s draconian policies, but there are thousands of other victims.”
China in the 1970s launched a one-child policy to slow the growth of its population, now at 1.3 billion. Couples who have unsanctioned children have been subject to heavy fines, job losses and forced sterilization.
There have been some modifications, allowing second children for ethnic populations and rural families whose first child is a girl. In 2002, under strong U.S. pressure, Beijing enacted a national law aimed at standardizing birth-control policies and reducing corruption and coercion.
Arthur Dewey, the State Department’s assistant secretary for population, refugees and migration, said there were some encouraging signs that China “may be beginning to understand that its coercive birth-planning regime has had extremely negative social, economic and human rights consequences for the nation.”
Dewey added, however, that “China’s birth-planning law and policies retain harshly coercive elements in law and practice.”
Among those negative effects have been female infanticide in rural areas where there is a strong desire for male heirs, imbalances in the sex ratio that has been estimated to be as much as 122 boys for every 100 girls, soaring rates of female suicide, and human trafficking.
“The one-child policy is the most pervasive source of human-rights violations in China today,” said Harry Wu, a human- rights activist who spent 19 years in the Chinese labor camp system.
Wu cited a 2003 document from an area of southern Guangdong Province where party secretaries and village heads were told their salaries would be cut in half if, in a 35-day period, they did not reach a goal of sterilizing 1,369 people, fitting 818 with IUDs and carrying out 163 abortions.
The case of Mao, said Michael Kozak, the State Department’s acting assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, highlights four serious abuses in the Chinese system: coercive family planning, continued use of “re-education through labor” camps, forced incarceration in psychiatric hospitals and torture.
“Mao’s case is an example of what can and does go wrong in China,” Kozak said.
Mao, who had twins in 1987, was confined to a psychiatric ward for six days in 1989 after another pregnancy sparked a fight with her work unit. She was fired from her job after protesting her treatment despite agreeing to abort another pregnancy, was sent back to a psychiatric hospital where she said she was tortured, and in April was given an 18-month sentence in a labor camp.
Rep. Smith: ‘Torture May Lead to Her Death’
Smith, a leading critic of China’s records on human rights and abortion, said he was “very fearful that the torture may lead to her death.”
The Bush administration, in addition to pressing the Chinese on human-rights issues, has for the last three years barred U.S. funds for the U.N. Population Fund, charging that the UNFPA’s support of China’s population planning programs allows China to implement its policies of coercive abortion.
? 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/12/15/112856.shtml
http://www.buyhard.fsnet.co.uk/forcedabortions.htm
British Court Allows Asylum for Chinese Woman Fleeing Forced Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 17, 2005
London, England (LifeNews.com) – A British court has told an immigration board that it should review its decision prohibiting a Chinese refuge from receiving asylum because she was fleeing a forced abortion and sterilization in China.
A British Court of Appeal ordered the Immigration Appeal Tribunal to reexamine the case of Chun Lan Liu, who was denied asylum but allowed to remain in the country on human rights grounds.
Because of that status, her ability to remain in the country is limited and her husband and two daughters cannot join her.
The immigration board denied the asylum because Chun did not belong to a particular social group, it said, that qualified her for the political status.
Chun lived in a rural area and qualified for a second child. When Chun became pregnant a third time, Chinese population control officials took her to a local hospital, delivered her eight-month old unborn child by caesarian section, and killed the baby.
Chun was later ordered back to the hospital for a sterilization, but she refused. Chinese authorities came to her home to take her by force, but she escaped and fled her hometown aboard a transport train. Later, she made her way to Britain.
The court decision is similar to many recent rulings by appeals courts in the United States, which have overturned immigration board decisions against allowing Chinese men and women escaping the population control policies of China.
New mobile clinics to carry out birth control policy in Tibet
by Kate Saunders
15 July 2003
The authorities in the Tibet Autonomous Region have stepped up the
implementation of family planning policy with the despatch of 64 specially
equipped vehicles to be used in different counties as mobile clinics. While
the clinics will be welcomed in some areas for the provision of
contraception, there are also fears among some health workers that they may
lead to an increase in pressure on Tibetan women to undergo birth control
measures. A report by Xinhua on 3 May stated: ‘The mobile clinics will be
used for check-ups on local women, distributing contraceptives, transporting
patients and publicising the local family planning policy.’
Women living in remote rural areas of Tibet generally do not have access to
cheap and safe contraception, and in recent years, many rural women have
reported that mobile family planning teams and health workers do not reach
their areas. The provision of these new mobile clinics is likely to increase
the outreach of birth control measures into the rural areas and
implementation of family planning policy, which varies greatly from county
to county. The Xinhua report does not give details of the counties and
prefectures where the mobile clinics will be despatched, and it does not
indicate that the clinics will provide any health education. The emphasis of
family planning policy in Tibet and China tends to be on prevention of
conception and control of fertility as opposed to the provision of education
on the health and well-being of women and thorough health screening.
A Western health professional who has worked in various clinics in the TAR
said: ‘Of course some of these rural women welcome the opportunity to use
contraception because they do not want to have more than one or two
children. But we have heard many reports of women who already have two or
three children being put under strong pressure to attend these clinics and
to use some form of contraception or undertake sterilisation if that is
available.’
The new mobile teams are likely to provide the Norplant hormonal implant and
the IUD to Tibetan women. It is not clear whether they will also offer
sterilisation (tubal ligation) or whether the vehicles would simply
transport women to the nearest hospital where this procedure can be carried
out. Most county hospitals in the TAR are unable to perform sterilisation
due to a lack of qualified staff who are able to perform surgery and
administer anaesthetics, so women often have to travel long distances to the
prefectural hospital.
The Western health professional said that the information that the mobile
clinics are visiting an area passes from the county hospital reproductive
health care personnel and Women’s Federation representatives down to the
township level health and Women’s Federation personnel. It is the job of the
Women’s Federation representative at village level to identify married women
who already have the quota of children allowed and are not taking
contraception, and to refer these women to the services of the clinic.
The level of expertise of health workers in charge of the mobile clinics
varies greatly. Often they do not have the expertise or experience to
discuss side-effects of contraceptives with women, or to screen women and
choose which form of contraceptive is the most appropriate. Methods of
contraception are generally always targeted at women, and there is usually
only one type of contraception available even though this may not be the
most suitable type for the individual in question.
Tibetan women living in rural areas do not have access to adequate health
care; the township health post may be many days travel away and inaccessible
during the winter and rainy seasons. Even when it is accessible, the health
worker is often young and inexperienced, having undergone what is only a one
or two month training period. Women in Tibet are at particular risk during
pregnancy and childbirth - Tibet’s very high maternal mortality rate is at
least partially a result of the lack of access to health services of women
living in rural areas.
Testimony of Chinese family planning officer, re. forced abortion policy, February 05, 2002
(an excerpt taken from article titled ‘Why Does NOW Support China’s Forced Abortion Policy?’, from Fox News at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,44751,00.html)
“Once I found a woman who was nine-months pregnant, but did not have a birth-allowed certificate. According to the policy, she was forced to undergo an abortion surgery,” Gao Xiaoduan, former family planning officer with the Chinese government, testified in tears before the U.S. House of Representatives. The baby was born alive, its lips sucking, its limbs stretching, Xiaoduan said. “A physician injected poison into its skull, and the child died, and it was thrown into the trash can.”
Chinese region ‘must conduct 20,000 abortions’
By Damien Mcelroy in Hong Kong
(Filed: 05/08/2001)
A CHINESE county has been ordered to conduct 20,000 abortions and sterilisations before the end of the year after communist family planning chiefs found that the official one-child policy was being routinely flouted.
The impoverished mountainous region of Huaiji has been set the draconian target by provincial authorities in Guangdong (formerly known as Canton).
Although the one-child policy is no longer strictly enforced in many rural areas, officials in Guangdong issued the edict after census officials revealed that the average family in Huaiji has five or more children.
Many of the terminations will have to be conducted forcibly on peasant women to meet the quota. As part of the campaign, county officials are buying expensive ultrasound equipment that can be carried to remote villages by car.
By detecting which women are pregnant, the machines will allow Government doctors to order terminations on the spot.
(excerpt from Telegraph)
Current Situation (taken from the testimony of Stephen W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, submitted to the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives for the Hearing on “Coercive Population Control in China: New Evidence of Forced Abortion and Forced Sterilization”, Wednesday, October 17, 2001. For complete article, go to http://www.pop.org/china/mosher.htm )
Twenty-two years after my initial field research in China, where do we stand?
Today, the Chinese family planning program continues to be carried out against the popular will by means of a variety of coercive measures. Despite official denials and intermittent efforts to discourage some of the more blatant manifestations of physical, that is, bodily, coercion, coercion continues to be, as it has been from the late 1970s, an integral part of the program. Mandatory IUD insertions, sterilizations, and abortions continue. The national family planning journal continues to issue thinly disguised injunctions to get the job done by whatever means necessary. The emphasis continues to be on “real action,” “effective measures,” and “practical results.”
Articles in the Chinese media openly speak of the need for coercion in family planning, and senior officials continue to endorse the policy as currently practiced. Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, for instance, said on October 13, 1999, that “China will continue to enforce its effective family planning policy in the new century in order to create a favorable environment for further development.” (italics added.) And in its White Paper on Population, released on December 19, 200o, the PRC avows it will continue the one-child policy for another fifty years. The White Paper actually sets a population target of 1.6 billion people by the year 2050.
The Chinese government, as it has for the past two decades, sought to suggest that these targets and quotas will be achieved by “education” and “persuasion.” As an example of the effectiveness of “education” and “persuasion,” the White Paper offered the information that women were putting off their first child until age 23.6 by 1998, while in 1970 they gave birth at 20.8 years. But this is disingenuous. The age at first birth has climbed in the People’s Republic
of China not because of “education” and “persuasion,” but because women are forbidden to marry until 23, and aborted if they become pregnant out of wedlock.
The Chinese government also maintains that local abuses?such as the abortion campaign recently ordered in the Guangdong county of Huaiji–as aberrations. But the Chinese program remains highly coercive not because of local deviations from central policies but as a direct, inevitable, and intentional consequence of those polices.
CHINA FORCES ABORTION, STERILIZATION ON TIBETANS LHASA, Tibet (CWNews.com/LSN.ca, Friday, Aug.4, 2000) - China’s forced abortion, one-child policy has come under fire again, this time from Tibetans who are testifying to horrific human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese, according to an August report in Jane magazine.
Tibetans are accusing China of intentionally trying to gut their population through a 20 year imposition of their one-child policy.
According to media mogul Ted Turner’s UN Foundation (UNF), “allegations of procedures forced on Tibetan women include infanticide, in which lethal chemicals are injected into a baby’s brain, forced abortion after nine months of pregnancy, abortion via electrical rods inserted through the vagina, rusty IUDs that may bring on tuberculosis and other diseases and IUDs left in the uterus for eight years instead of the recommended three.”
Blake Kerr, the US doctor who reported on the situation in Tibet, said the conditions in Tibetan hospitals he visited were “a hygienic atrocity,” with bloodstained gurneys and the regular use of non-sterilized equipment. “According to the Tibetan Women’s Association, nearly 20 percent of Tibetans may no longer be able to reproduce because of sterilization
procedures,” reports the UNF. “One Tibetan woman interviewed by researchers at the Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India, said 70 percent of women over age 18 in her village, including herself, were sterilized. In one district, 308 women were reportedly sterilized in 22 days.”
This is not the first time such allegations have come to light. Just last year “the US State Department’s 1999 report on China claims that forced sterilization and abortion are common in Tibet,” notes UNF. But China continues to deny practicing forced
sterilization or abortion and has claimed that policies are implemented “in full consideration of the wishes of the Tibetan people.”
cheers.