Women’s Rights in China Successfully Organized Conference on Family Planning Policy and Population Development

Posted on 2012-05-30 by wrchina

Source: WRIC Author: WRIC Pulsihed Time: 05-29-2012

Family Planning has been the national policy of China for more than 30 years. What are the reasons for this policy? What are its effects on Chinese society? Should the policy continue to be implemented? On May 29th, 2012, Women’s Rights in China held the Conference on Family Planning Policy and Population Development in New York, USA. WRIC invited experts and scholars to discuss the Family Planning Policy’s impact on society, family and individuals in China and problems currently facing population development in China.

A group of scholars participated in a morning round table discussion session, including Tibetan history researcher, woman’s writer Li Jianglin, theorist Hu Ping, WRIC founder Zhang Jing and One Child Policy victim Han Wu. A BBC interview of Ma Jian, author of Yi Zhi Dao, was also broadcast. In the afternoon, Ma Jian, Ann Noonan, Zhang Yujun gave talks. Chinese population policy experts Yang Zhizhu and He Yafu, both of whom were unable to attend, submitted papers that were read by others. More than 120 New York residents attended the event, including Wang Xuezhen, who shared her experience of 11 attempts at meeting Chen Guangcheng during his house arrest.

Professor Yang Zhizhu, formerly Associate Professor of Law at Chinese Youth Political Institute, was fired in 2010 for having an extra-quota child. The birth of his second daughter and its aftermath initiated fierce debate in Chinese society. The event catalyzed the most closely watched public debate the One Child Policy’s thirty year history. Prof. Yang had long commented on China’s Population and Family Control policies. His articles have appeared in Chinese publications such as Southern Weekly, New Kuabao, Eastern Morning Daily, New Beijing, Modern Express, etc. He was a leading activist and dissident against the One Child Policy.

Professor Yang’s report, The Situation of Chinese Women Under The Birth Control Policy, stated, “From fear of persecution of the One Child Policy and forced abortions, many women had no choice but to hide or leave their homes. Ultimately these women gave birth taking considerable risks outside of registered hospitals. This situation resulted in the death rate from birth among mobile population to exceed pregnant women in rural areas. Women giving extra-quota births, which accounted for 6% of the total population of pregnant women, accounted for 50% of deaths.”

He Yafu was a former reporter for Coastal News, founder of Babi Translation Agency. Mr. He had published hundreds of articles on Population and Family Planning Policy on the internet. The web visitor count of his microblog had reached over ten million, leading all other microblogs focusing on the One Child Policy. He also published articles in Eastern Morning Daily, First Financial Daily and China Youth Daily, etc. Mr. He was an accomplished commentator on Population Development and Family Planning Policy in China.

Mr. He’s paper, Why The One Child Policy Should Be Abolished, stated that “Over population in China” was a myth. Of the more than 200 countries worldwide, almost none practiced forced birth control outside of Mainland China. Whether a country was overpopulated depended not on the total number of people, but more importantly its population density. Many countries had higher population density than China, for example, South Korea at 487 persons per square kilometer and Japan at 337. In contrast, China’s population density was at 140 persons per square kilometer. Even taking out inhospitable parts of western China, its population density would still be far below Japan and South Korea. Governments in Japan and South Korea not only did not practice the Family Control Policy but actively encourage reproduction.

Mr. He pointed out that to enforce draconian population control policies would require sufficient rationale. Forced reproductive restrictions infringed upon the basic human rights of citizens. He proposed a test of three criteria: One, would fewer population lead to quicker prosperity? Two, was the Family Planning Policy the only vehicle to control population growth? Three, human rights. The Family Planning Policy could not pass even the first, practical test let alone the latter two. There were no solid reasons to enforce it.

Ms. Ann Noonan was the director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting. Ms, Noonan said that reproduction was a basic human right. The One Child Policy was a severe abuse of human rights. It was one of the most egregious and violent persecutions of women in the world today. Ms. Noonan said that women and their families in China who are victims of human rights abuses need Voice of America (VOA) radio and Radio Free Asia (RFA) broadcasts. She reminded victims of the policy that the American people would not sit idle while millions of innocent victims shed their blood.

WRIC member Zhang Yujun gave a presentation of reports on a widespread yet largely unpublicized child brides in Putian, Fujian. WRIC volunteer Yao Cheng had been investigating and reuniting child brides with their families since 2009.

Mr. Ma Jian gave the last presentation. Ma Jian was a famous Sino-British writer whose novel Beijing Coma received the 2009 British International Free Speech Award, 2009 Athens Literature Award and nominated for Berlin Literature Award. Beijing Coma has been published in more than 30 languages around the world. Mr. Ma was listed as one of fifty most important modern writers by French magazine Lire in 2004. Mr. Ma’s newest work, Yin Zhi Dao was the result of seven years’ labor. It combined large numbers of in-the-field interviews and countless factual cases to tell the complete story of the One Child Policy.

Mr. Ma emphasized that one book could not stop the One Child Policy. However, it was the duty of a writer to express respect for life, especially the life of a child who had yet to taste a breath of air. The Chinese government regularly executed millions of innocent babies in the womb every year. The warmth body of a loving mother became all too frequently the execution ground for babies. Since 2008, Family Planning Policy passed from the responsibility of the propaganda departments to “secret agencies” headed by Party Committee chairmen at all levels, whose actions were hidden from reporters, making Mr. Ma’s investigation much more difficult.

Family Planning Policy, Mr. Ma said, was the result of a planned economy. Since the planned economy had already been abolished in China, the Family Planning Policy should be as well.

Jiangling Li: Forced Abortion, a Permanent Scar on Women

Posted on 2012-05-30 by wrchina

Source: WRIC Author: WRIC, Yang Yu Pulsihed Time: 05-29-2012

Women’s Right in China held in Flushing, New York Office “China’s Family Planning Policy and Population Conference” on May 29, 2012. Participants of the conference had very heated discussion on China’s forced family planning policy and its impact on Chinese society.
The first speaker was the Tibetan history expert and writer, Li Jiangli. She made public the first time her horrible experience of forced abortion. She said, abortion brings more pain than any other physical pains to a woman because not only she has no dignity when the abortion is in process but also she feels like a conspirator killing her child. Women can gather together and talk about anything – but not about abortion because the process is too painful. Li Jiang stated, abortion is the commonly shared nightmare, scar, and secret of all the women in China. On the other hand, a woman will never share the experience with her husband or male partner, because he cannot truly understand the pain of his woman. Men are excluded from the issue of abortion and it is likely they don’t want to learn about the experience. Being unable to protect his woman makes the gap between two sexes
Theorist Hu Ping also explained his point of view that China’s forced family planning policy is an unprecedented violence. What is more perplexing is that the policy is enforced without much resistance – even the privileged class is included. From official statistics, there are annually 10,000,000 abortion cases in China, which is like massacre of 10,000,000 people. One-Child Policy incurred millions of families without decedents, because they have only one child and later loose them when parents loose reproduction ability. One-Child Policy also results in the fact that the only child is harder to educate. In order to advertise the family planning policy, the China Communist Party fervently advocates for eugenics, which is closely interconnected with Fascism. Besides, the family planning policy consolidates discrimination against peasants in China. In fact, there has never been any societal discrimination against peasants before the China Communist Party established in recent 60 years.
Han Wu asserted that men are indirect victims of the family planning policy as well. After his wife was sterilized, he felt like their intimate life was unlocked by the sterilization ring. All the participants concluded that both men and women are victims of forced family planning policy.
When discussing why the forced family planning policy is so entrenched, initiator of Women’s Right in China, Zhang Jing used a couple of figures to demonstrate the issue. Zhang Jing said, according to official statistics from Chinese government in 2005, there were 58,700,000 family planning officials, 1,142,000 full-time family planning officials, and 57,270,000 part-time family planning officials. This means there are more than 100,000,000 people, which are one tenth of the whole population of China, involved in enforcing family planning policy. What is more, there are about 40,000 community family planning offices and about 5, 000 family planning service stations. The State Council has more than 20 departments dedicated for family planning policy – no such governmental policies would be this prevalent! Averagely, every Chinese citizen annually pays ten yuan for the family planning policy.

Aside from the shocking benefit chain, the family planning policy even practices “political veto,” thus further consolidating the link between the family planning policy and the political life of governmental officials.
When discussing how to change the family planning policy, Li Jianglin asserted that women should no longer remain silent, and speak out their pain from abortion; otherwise, this pain will go on to their daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters, etc.

At the end of the conference, an interview from BBC with Ma Jian, a traveling author in Britain, was played. Ma Jian stated his new book Dark Road was a persecution of China’s family planning policy, and was also an attempt to regain women’s control over their uterus.

The Sad story of Deng Lurong, an abused girl from Anhui

Posted on 2012-05-25 by wrchina

News release： WRIC Photography： WRIC ‎ May ‎12, ‎2012

A couple living in Anhui Province (specific location omitted) had given birth to two daughters. The husband’s name is Deng Jiechao. When the local family planning cadres went after them for penalty, Deng’s wife escaped and hid in another province, hoping to have a son. However, the third child was a girl. Disheartened, she left the family and never showed up again. The family was too poor to come up with money to pay the penalty, so the family planning cadres took everything that had value. Unable to grab Deng Jiechao, who was in hiding in another province, the family planning cadres detained his old mother, who stayed in the village to take care of two young granddaughters; one was 12, and the other was 10 at the time. The eldest girl was under the care of a relative. One night a neighborhood man broke into the house and raped the 12 year old girl, whose name is Deng Lurong. The rapist was detained for five days and the case was closed. Deng’s mother, released after one month’s detention died of grief after hearing the story.

The only photo Deng Lurong had with her eldest son. （re-photographed by WRIC）

Deng’s family，Deng Lourong is always disappear. (Photo by WRIC’s Yao Cheng)

The shock of rape and the sudden death of her grandmother traumatized Deng Lurong, and she started to show symptoms of mental illness. At age 15, she was sold by a human trafficker to a man more than 20 years older than her in another county. At age 16, she gave birth to a daughter; a son arrived two years later. Her husband’s family is in a very poor village. Many male villagers cannot afford to get married, so she was made into a money machine by her husband. She was forced to sleep with anyone who was willing to pay, regardless of age. Her husband pocketed all the money. She was physically abused by the whole family, including her husband’s sister-in-law. When the abuse became too hard to bear, Deng Lurong would escape into the mountains. She would wander around for a month, sleeping in haystacks at night, surviving on raw sweet potatoes and turnips. She would kneel and bow her head at every grave she saw, thinking that one of them could be the grave of her grandmother. Due to long time abuse and worry for her young son’s eye disease, her mental illness became more and more serious.

Villagers told WRIC volunteers that these houses were earned by Deng Lurong’s forced prostitution.

WRIC volunteers exposed this case, and met the local village cadres, her husband and his family. They reached an agreement to stop abusing Deng Lurong. In May 12, 2012, the volunteer brought a German reporter to the village and interviewed her, hoping to draw attention to her miserable life. However, judging by the long time coldness of local law enforcement organizations and villagers toward her situation, the hope for change is rather slim.

WRIC volunteers interviewed Deng Lurong father and her stepmother. (Photo by WRIC’s Yao Cheng)

Deng Lurong’s husband. (Photo by WRIC’s Yao Cheng)

Deng’s in-laws and her younger son, who had an eye disease and was close to be completely blind. (Photo by WRIC’s Yao Cheng)

Deng’s family other two kids. (Photo by WRIC’s Yao Cheng)

WRIC Helps “Adopted Daughters” for Kin-Search Four families Identified Their Relatives On the Spot

Posted on 2012-05-07 by wrchina

By WRIC May 13, 2012

On May 13, 2012, mother’s day, the Kin Search Project named the Gathering Day for Every Family was conducted in Chang Le, Fu Jian Province. Invited by families trying to find their relatives and the organizations conducting kin search, two volunteers of WRIC, accompanied by a German Women and Children Organization rendered them economic assistance to hire Zheng De Xin Judicial Expertise Institution for DNA tests. After the parental testing on the spot, Guo Yunjin recognized her biological father, Lin Fugui; Lin Yachun recognized her biological father, Huang Mingguan, Chen Youqin recognized her biological father Lin Guoqing, Lin Fan and her sister Shi Jinchai. Good news keep coming after the event. According to the report by the project manager of the DNA database on May 18, there have been 15 adopted daughters find their biological parents. This is a successful example of kin search through DNA matching pioneering a new route to family recognition.

This is the second time WRIC organized the event for child brides finding their parents in 2012. The first event was held on January 16, 2012.

Because of the traditional concept of “men are superior to women” and escalated by the birth control policy, a few of families had to give away the new delivered girls. Therefore many child brides had no memories of their hometown and relatives. DNA parenting test is the only way to identify their long lost families after twenty or thirty years.

Meeting started at 9 am on May 13.The assembly hall of Bin Xin Literature, located at the center of the Bin Xin Park in Chang Le, was overcrowded with hundreds of child brides and parents looking for their girls. At the meeting, adopted daughters and parents was introducing themselves in hope of finding their relatives. Out of the meeting hall, girls and parents were exchanging their background information and not let any detail slip away.

In the woods of the park, pairs of people looking alike were identifying each other. White-headed elders and adopted daughters clasped hands and touched each other’s faces. During the three-hour meeting, three girls found their parents.

From 2 pm to 5 pm in the afternoon, DNA tests were conducted in the Forever Studio nearby. Thirty child brides coming from Pin Hai Fishing Village in Putian and twenty parents from Chang Le drew blood for DNA analysis. Three pairs were successfully matched on the testing spot.

When the event in Chang Le finished, volunteers of WRIC hurried to child brides’ families in Putian that evening and interviewed them on 14 and 15. On the afternoon of 16, the wonderful news came that the DNA results of child bride, Guo Yunjin and her father Lin Fugui were matched. Many cases were waiting for testing and matching.

This event achieved the maximum effect. Because parents in Chang Le were too old to travel and adopted parents were negative to the event, child brides could not earn financial support from them. When hearing WRIC sponsored DNA test expenses, those child brides who didn’t think they would get any presents raise hopes again. The good news relieved us.

Before the event, volunteers provided information in terms of other approaches of kin search. Three pairs of parents found their children respectively in Quanzhou, Fujian, Nanchang, Jiangsu and Guiyang, Guizhou. WRIC keeps raising fund for kin search activities.

China threatens families who resist its one-child policy

Posted on 2012-05-02 by wrchina

By WRIC’s Jing Zhang May 2, 2012

(Forwarded from National Review)

China’s War on Baby Girls

The blind Chinese human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who escaped from house arrest on April 22, who may be under the protection of the U.S. Embassy, was initially detained for exposing the massive abuse of Chinese women under China’s one-child policy. His documentation of forced sterilizations and abortions landed him in jail for four years, followed by a year and a half of house arrest. His daring escape has now triggered renewed attacks on organizations engaged in helping Chinese women to keep and feed their infants.

Since April 28, the Family Planning Commission of Susong County in China’s Anhui province has been harassing families of pregnant women and infants who have received aid from a charities that help rural families raise infant girls. Often the girl is a second child, which is in violation of China’s one-child policy.

China ultrasonic identification of fetal is common. The picture shows WRIC volunteer Su, changlan visited the unlicensed clinic of identification of fetal in Xi’an. (photos by WRIC)

WRIC volunteers rescued from forced abortion out of the little girl Lele 2013, in Anhui. (photos by WRIC)

PRC government agents have issued heavy fines to families for over-quota births and have threatened forced abortion for mothers with “illegal” pregnancies. Li Bin, the former chairman of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, is the current governor of Anhui province.

The offending charity is the Rural Chinese Infant Assistance Program, which has grown in response to the severe gender imbalance among newborns. Allowed only one child, many parents abort their female children or stop trying to conceive after the birth of a boy. The Infant Assistance Program aims to elevate the cultural value of infant girls through direct aid, without any conditions, to their families. Several hundred families have benefited in Susong County alone. Rural families have welcomed the program enthusiastically.

Since Chen Guangcheng’s escape, the high-profile persecution initiated by the Susong Family Planning Commission has created panic among benefiting families and their communities. Many lives are directly threatened. Government agents have announced that any family with an “illegal” birth will face a fine of 50,000 yuan ($7,700, about ten times China’s annual per capita income). Any woman found to be pregnant “illegally” — without a birth permit — will face a forced abortion.

Family Planning agents have also threatened to take action against volunteers and employees of the Infant Assistance Program if they do not cooperate with the authorities by turning over all material related to the program.

In the 30 years of the brutal one-child policy, hundreds of millions of infants have been killed. This has led to serious social problems that are now obvious — not only the gender imbalance, but also the aging of the general population. Regardless, the PRC government forges ahead with its notoriously inhumane policy.

The Susong Family Planning Commission’s persecution of the Infant

Assistance Program should outrage observers in China and abroad.

The organization I head, Women’s Rights in China, demands that the Susong Family Planning Commission immediately stop all harassment of the Infant Assistance Program; cease threats and fines against volunteers and families who are beneficiaries; and treat “Harmonious Society and People First” as a principle and not just a Party slogan. We call on Family Planning agents to listen to their own consciences and to heed the outcry from the Chinese and international public.

As long as the Susong Family Planning Commission continues to persecute the Infant Assistance Program’s volunteers, pregnant women, and the families of baby girls, Women’s Rights in China will raise its voice to condemn it in the media and to take legal action against all responsible officials.