Posted on 11/04/2005 3:00:05 PM PST by emiller
Linyi, China (LifeNews.com) -- Since he placed a spotlight on a brutal campaign by population control officials in one region of China, blind activist Chen Guangcheng has been under house arrest and twice assaulted for trying to leave. Now, some of the details of the thousands of forced abortions and sterilizations he helped expose are coming to light. In a comprehensive report by the San Francisco Chronicle, women who were subjected to violence, harassment and forced abortions tell their story.
Zhu Hongying, 40, and her husband, Xia Jiandong, 40 were farmers in a local village outside the huge city of Linyi. They already had one son and when population control officials found out Zhu was five months pregnant, she hid with family members in Linyi.
"We panicked and ran into (Linyi) to hide," Zhu said during an interview with the Chronicle by telephone because police have sealed off her area following Chen's detention.
Zhu said the officials arrested three of her sisters in order to force her to come out of hiding.
When she returned home, "The people from the family planning department were waiting for us. They demanded 700 RMB (about $90, two months' wages for Zhu) to release my sisters-in-law, and then they pushed me into a van and took me to a local family planning clinic."
Once there, eight officials surrounded her and coerced her into agreeing to have an abortion, she told the San Francisco newspaper.
"I just kept sobbing and begging, but no one listened," she said. "Finally, I was so weak, I just said 'yes.' Then a doctor came in and gave me an injection in the stomach. After I took the shot, the whole day I didn't feel anything. The second day in the early morning blood and water all flowed out of me. Then the baby came out, but it was dead. It was a boy."
After she had the abortion, her husband said, a nurse came back into the room, placed the baby in a black plastic bag.
"She told me to go throw it into a truck, which had a large container kind of thing at the back," Xia explained to the Chronicle. "When I opened the door and looked in, it was full of black bags and blood."
Just a week later, population control officials arrested Zhu again because they found out one of her sisters was pregnant for a second time. They held Zhu for ransom for five days until her family paid another hefty fine for her release.
Her sister-in-law was forcibly aborted as well.
What the officials did in Zhu's case and the case of thousands of other women and families is illegal. Population control officials in Beijing say the local authorities have been removed from their posts, but they appear to be doing nothing to compensate the victims or help Chen be released from illegal custody.
"It is a crazy and merciless situation," the 34 year-old Chen said just days before he was abducted by local Linyi officials and placed under house arrest. Those actions came after Chen spoke with the Washington Post and Time Magazine and brought the terrible campaign to light.
"Lately, no one was really enforcing the one-child policy. But as the population in Shandong has ballooned, I think the provincial government put pressure on local family planning departments, who've just gone nuts," he said.
In the few months before he spoke with reporters, Chen said 7,000 women had been forcibly aborted or sterilized. He went to Beijing to plead his case with government officials and alert the world when he was detained.
Miller,
Doesn't sound like these people have the choices we do. If these people fought for their unborn children, they'd be imprisoned...or worse.
All the more reason to overturn Roe. Freedom gives us a great responsibilty to our unborn childern. Those who fight for abortion rights are utterly reckless and self-serving.
Scott
Well, I look at it this way-- our ancestors went to war over among other things- taxation without representation. Would we go to war for that today? No. We're just as weak and we let the gubmint step on the backs of our necks. I'm just saying people as a whole today- we're not like generations past. And that's a pity.
Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.
We were warned.
Correct...the product of a socialist state. Look at France, can they defend themselves? Can they stand up to the muslims rioting in the street? When dependency on the state is a way of life, why be responsible for your actions? Nobody else is. Things like personal responsibility, ownership (be it property or a cause) is just not a part of the culture.
It's not like these people don't know how to use explosives- they pretty much invented them. How many people would have to die? As many as it would take to have the trucks with the dead babies in the back stop rolling around town. It's far better to sacrifice everything and die or kill, than to be forced to live like this.
The alternative is to have a bunch of trucks running around with dead babies in the back for generations.
Don't get me wrong...I would champion the idea of these people having the freedoms that we do. And if a goverment upheaval meant citizens marching in the street with guns and bombs in the name of freedom, so then be it. They should fight for freedom.
Before you get too hard on these people. Keep in mind that an illegal birth can result in entire families imprisoned, whole towns have been known to have large fines levied against them. And of course, the neighborhood enforcer knows when to visit without anybody to prevent them from carrying off a pregnant mother.
The folks here abort with a lot less pressure than that. By your measure, the people who protected Elian Gonzales were cowards because they didn't charge the guy with the automatic weapon. Red China is a very large bamboo prison.
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