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Chinese region 'must conduct 20,000 abortions'
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Court Links Right to Asylum To China's Sterilization Policy
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Church Leaders arrested in China
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Let us not forget the
Tiananmen Square Massacre
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Powerful pictures and resources |
A
list of the known Catholic Bishops and Priests who are prisoners in
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http://www.laogai.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=2319
Township authorities have forced hundreds of women in
Around June of last year, officials of the CCP Committee and government of
In late March of this year, when new township authorities were appointed to
their posts, the first thing they did was to force the pregnant women who had
paid the "birth guarantee fee" to the previous authorities to have
abortions. Hundreds of women were captured and driven to undergo abortions by
force. Even those women who had been pregnant for eight months were not spared.
According to statistics, more than 160 women who were eight months pregnant
were forced to have abortions.
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=3629
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2 July, 2005 |
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Fr Vincent Kong Guocun of the Wenzhou Diocese is freed after nearly six years of house arrest. |
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Hong Kong (AsiaNews/UCAN) – A young priest of
the unofficial church in Fr Ding Zhaohua, another priest of the underground
There are at least eight million Catholics in
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This is one of the most moving testimonies I have ever heard. It comes from Dr. Dobson's website. It will break your heart and is a must read..
http://www.family.org/docstudy/newsletters/A0000003.html
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=23079
Chinese Scientists Keep Human Embryo Hearts Alive after Abortions
The first heart comes from a baby aborted at 7-1/2 weeks on June 5. Wang said he removed the heart and placed it into the culture and was happy to find it still beating between 60 and 80 times per second the next day. Microscopic evidence showed the cells of the heart were dividing. "This showed that the heart was growing," Wang said excitedly.
Another tragic case
highlights the eugenic impact of
Thursday, August 9 3:30 PM SGT
Chinese woman drowns granddaughter in
quest for grandson
A Chinese woman has been sentenced to six
years in prison for drowning her new-born granddaughter because she was
desperate for a baby boy to carry on the family name, state media said
Thursday.
The infanticide in Kelai
village in central
Yang Dongmei's
daughter-in-law had already given birth to a girl and when she gave birth to a
second in August 1998, Yang decided to kill the baby, the China Women's News
service said.
The day her daughter-in-law gave birth,
she placed the baby in a wooden tub of water and drowned her while the mother
was asleep, the report said.
She later told her daughter-in-law, Chen
Meiyuan, what she had done but Chen decided to cover
up Yang's actions when police questioned her.
Yan, on the other hand, tried to push
the blame onto her daughter-in-law.
The court in
It is rare for such a case to be
reported in the official media, although human rights groups say female
infanticide is not uncommon among peasants who still hold the traditional
belief that sons are more valuable than daughters.
Because of the 20-year-old one-child
policy, an untold number of baby girls have died from murder or from neglect
through lack of medical care or nutrition, human rights groups say.
The government admits it has been
difficult to change traditional attitudes favoring boys, but rights activists
say there are concrete measures the government could take such as providing
social security for peasants and alleviating poverty.
Chinese sons carry on the family name,
inherit land and are seen as more capable of doing rural work.
UNFPA Signals Approval
HUAIJI, China, Aug 7, 2001 (LSN.ca) -
Communist China has ordered a small impoverished
county of less than one million people to perform 20,000 abortions and sterilizations by the end of the
year. The Telegraph reports that family
planning officials in
As part of the campaign, ultrasound
equipment is being purchased so unauthorized
child bearing can be detected and the children aborted - forcibly if necessary. In order to pay for the
machines, the county's 15,000
employees had their meager $100/month salaries slashed in half. As part of the drive to meet the quota, doctors have
been ordered to sterilize women as
soon as they give birth after officially approved pregnancies.
Nevertheless, Sven Burmester, the United Nations Population Fund representative in
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=4575
Persecution Of
Chinese Catholic Bishop Reported
Communist China's treatment of Catholics
reported on Monday that a bishop in the underground Church is the target of
renewed persecution.
Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang,
79, had his home ransacked on March 4 by police who seized some of his
belongings, including Bibles and other religious materials, according to the
Cardinal Kung Foundation of
The bishop had spent more than 20 years
in prison for refusing to renounce the authority of the pope over the Catholic
Church in
Many Catholics refused
Disney sweatshops alleged
Anti-sweatshop advocacy group charges that workers make books under oppressive
conditions.
August 18, 2005: 2:54 PM EDT
At a press conference, Charles Kernaghan, director of
the NLC, released an 11-minute videotape in which workers -- their faces hidden
-- in the Hung Hing and Nord Race factories say they
have been injured by unsafe equipment and show their bandaged fingers and cut
hands.
"There's blood on this book," Kernaghan
said as he held up a copy of a child's book made in
On the video, some workers describe the oppressive conditions under which they
are forced to work, including heat, long hours and unpaid, forced overtime.
Still pictures show the machines, which workers describe as lacking basic
safeguards.
One woman holds up a Mickey Mouse book, "Haunted Halloween," and
describes the dangers of the machines that press and glue the binding together.
Plant workers also describe how visiting businessmen are given show tours at
Hung Hing where everything is cast as rosy.
Kernaghan called for Disney to release the names of
all of its factories in
When contacted for comment, Disney spokesman Greg Foster said he had not seen
the tape, but Disney "takes claims such as those raised today by the NLC
very seriously."
And in a written statement, Disney said, "We have a strong International
Labor Standards Code of Conduct for Manufacturers and conduct regular social
compliance audits of the independently run factories that produce Disney
branded merchandise."
The statement went on to say, "The Walt Disney Company has contacted Verité, a non-profit social auditing and training firm, to
conduct an investigation of the claims regarding the Hung Hing
and Nord Race factories."
Disney, which does not own the factories, but subcontracts to them, said in the
statement that its officials "have conducted approximately 20 ILS audits
at these factories since 1998."
According to the statement, "These audits reflect instances of
noncompliance followed by remediation. However, these audits at no time
revealed the severity of the violations reported by the NLC today. ...
"Disney and its licensees will work closely with Verité
to ensure a thorough investigation of these claims and take the appropriate
actions to remediate violations found. Disney will also work with local civil
society organizations in
Foster said Disney does audits both announced and
unannounced.
The videotape was made by a Hong Kong-based group called Students and Academics
against Corporate Misbehavior, and passed along to the NLC.
Both Kernaghan and the Chinese workers say these
factories never take action until prodded by international pressure.
Cosmetics from executed Chinese
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050913/hl_afp/britainchinarightsbeauty_050913085955
Tue Sep 13, 2005, 5:03 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - A British newspaper said that a Chinese cosmetics company was
using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty
products for sale in Europe.
Agents for the firm, which could not be named for legal reasons, have told
would-be customers that skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot is
being used to develop collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments, the Guardian
newspaper said following an undercover investigation.
"The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the
It said doctors and politicians were worried about the dangers associated with
people wanting to look better in such ways, because European regulations to
control cosmetic treatments such as collagen are not expected for several
years.
"Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of
infection," the newspaper said.
Collagen is the fibrous protein constituent of skin, cartilage, bone, and other
connective tissue.
The Guardian said it was unclear whether the anonymous company's treatments
were already available in
It was also unable to say whether collagen made from prisoners' skin was in the
research stage or was in production.
"However, the Guardian has learned that the company has exported collagen
products to the
The newspaper said that when formally approached the agent denied the company
was using skin harvested from executed prisoners.
At the same time, it said the same person had already admitted this to an
undercover researcher.
It quoted that agent as saying: "A lot of the research is still carried
out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted
foetus." This material, he said, was being
bought from "bio tech" companies based in the
One recent tally by a European anti-capital punishment group said that at least
5,000 of the near 5,500 known executions worldwide in 2004 took place in
See the Telegraph report at:
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F08%2F05%2Fwchin05.xml
Chinese region 'must conduct 20,000
abortions'
By Damien Mcelroy
in
(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
Although the one-child policy is no
longer strictly enforced in many rural areas, officials in
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.
At the Huaiji
county hospital, where most of the operations will take place, it is not only
women with unauthorised pregnancies who are facing
traumatic surgery in insanitary conditions.
Officials said that, as part of the
drive to meet the quota, doctors had been ordered to sterilise
women as soon as they gave birth after officially approved pregnancies.
The drive to perform 20,000 abortions
and sterilisations in six months in a county with a
population of fewer than one million represents a heavy assault on the women of
child-bearing age in its population.
It is equivalent to the number of legal
abortions that take place each year in
Demographers believe that
Claiming to be strapped for funds, the
local county leadership decided that it could buy the ultrasound machines only
if it withheld part of the salaries of its 15,000 employees. One government
official said: "We are a very poor county. As our budget is very small, we
don't have the money to buy new equipment."
Employees of the county government have
spoken out against the leaders who have implemented the bizarre levy. Teachers,
policemen and clerks, who already find their 600 yuan
(£50) monthly stipend inadequate, now have to support their families on half
that amount.
One official said: "Party members
and officials are people, too. We don't know why we should pay for such a
heartless drive."
Sven Burmester,
the United Nations Population Fund representative in
That "bad press" has included
reports of babies drowned in paddy fields by officials. There was also the
testimony of Gao Xiaoduan, a former family planning official, who told an
American congressional committee in 1998 that heavily pregnant women were often
forced to have abortions.
Most recently, a woman was reported to
have died while trying to escape from officials who were attempting to sterilise her.
Many of the operations carried out by
the hated Family Planning Association are forced on women, sometimes as late as
eight and a half months into pregnancy. The most common method of inducing
birth is to inject a saline solution into the womb.
Abortion in
Hospitals use the operations to generate
cash both from local women and visitors from neighbouring
The clinics catering for
Within hours, they are back on the
streets or boarding the train back to
There are no such time-consuming demands
in southern
20 December 2000: Chinese told one child
is rule to 2003
2 November 2000: Chinese census aims to
record 1.2bn people
27 August 2000: Anger sweeps
25 June 2000:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18596-2005Mar8.html
Wednesday, March 9, 2005; Page
Court
Men whose wives were forcibly sterilized under
The groundbreaking ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
could greatly expand the number of people able to stay in the
"Involuntary sterilization irrevocably strips persons of one of the
important liberties we possess as human: our reproductive freedom," Judge
Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.
"Therefore, one who has suffered involuntary sterilization, either
directly or because of the sterilization of a spouse,
is entitled," without having to prove anything else, to refuge in this
country, he wrote.
The plaintiff in the case, Quili Qu,
came to the
Qu's wife gave birth in 1979, leaving the baby with
her mother. Later, a birth permit was granted. When Chinese officials
discovered that the child was 5, not an infant, "the Chinese bureaucrats
became enraged," the court said. A neighborhood committee "found Qu's wife, bound her, and took her to a hospital,"
where she was sterilized.
When Qu sought to stay in the
The appeals court disagreed, describing forced sterilization as a
"permanent and continuing act of persecution."
A court in Gujarat
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2001/8/5/asia/0537sext&sec=asia
Sunday, August 5, 2001
Court holds docs liable for wrong sex
abortion
NEW DELHI: A couple from Vadodara in the western Indian state of Gujarat, who moved
court after they discovered that the foetus they had
aborted was male and not female, have been awarded compensation, reports said
yesterday.
According to The Indian Express,
the couple did not come under the purview of the Pre-Diagnostic Techniques
Regulation Act of 1996 that prohibits sex-determination tests.
However, the Union Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare is looking at the possibility of framing charges against the
couple and the doctors for doing the sex-determination test for the
"obvious purpose of aborting the girl child".
Rita Jadhav
had three daughters and wanted a son, which was why she consulted a gynaecologist when she became pregnant for the fourth time
in 1992. She was informed that the foetus was female.
However, the doctor who performed the
abortion told Jadhav that the foetus
was a male. The couple sued the two doctors, accusing them of negligence.
While observing that the doctors
involved in the case had performed a sex-determination case though it was
against medical ethics, a consumer court directed them to pay Rs25,000 (RM2,014) with 10% interest to the couple.
The situation is particularly worrisome
in states like Punjab, Haryana and
Girls are still considered a burden in
many Indian households. Parents worry about the dowry gifts they have to
arrange for during her wedding and therefore prefer boys.--dpa
Priests Fight Sex-Selection Abortions in
Source: Reuters; August 11, 2001
Priests Fight Sex-Selection Abortions in
With modern medicine allowing parents to
learn the sex of unborn children, some
Indian families -- traditionally anxious for sons -- are resorting to abortion for female unborn children. This year's
census showed a sharp drop in the
number of girls born.
Some 250 priests gathered at a Sikh
shrine in Fatehgarh Sahib in
"We will use the services of
priests at various gurudwaras to take the message against female feticide to the
grassroots," said Manjit Singh, the religious head of
A gurudwara is
a Sikh temple.
A 1994 ban on using medical tests to
determine the sex of unborn children has
proved hard to enforce. In Fatehgarh Sahib where the Sikh priests were meeting, the
number of females was just 750 per
1,000 males, which a local news agency said was the lowest in
The Indian Medical Association estimated in January that about five million female fetuses were aborted each year purely on the grounds that the children would be of the wrong sex.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-noonan012302.shtml
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Bible Smuggling By Ann Noonan, |
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Religious persecution in The Center
for Religious Freedom issued a press release on January 11th protesting
against the Chinese government's crackdown on Chinese Christian churches.
"A letter from members of an underground Chinese Christian church, dated
December 31, 2001, and smuggled to the New York-based Committee for
Investigation on Persecution of Religion in This recent crackdown comes as no surprise. During last December's
National Religious Working Conference in The CPC insists on controlling In his speech at the National Religious Working Conference, Jiang Zemin emphasized that the CPC's work related to religion
is an important part of what the Of the situation's impact on Hong Kong's identity and the future of its citizens, Ann Lau, a Chinese human-rights activist living in the U.S. remarked, "The anomaly is not that there are various religious sects of Christianity in the PRC, nor PRC's persecution of Lai Kwing-keung who smuggled thousands of Bibles into the PRC — it is the silence of Hong Kong officials and the people of Hong Kong to defend their own and leaving such task to President Bush of the U.S." This week in In a statement to the Laogai Research
Foundation, Hong Kong legislator Emily Lau said, "It is very sad to
learn that shipping Bibles to mainland As President Bush prepares to embark on a state visit to China next month, religious leaders and human-rights leaders continue to offer hope to Mrs. Lai and her family, all hoping that US pressure will help secure the release of her husband, and allow for all citizens inside China to live and worship in peace. |
http://www.consciencelaws.org/Examining-Conscience-Issues/background/Abortion/BackAbortion12.html
by Sean Murphy
Administrator, Protection of Conscience Project
On 23 April, 2001, Chinese family planning officials took Zhang Chunhong from the
Nurses injected a saline solution into her uterus the next day, attempting to
induce a stillbirth, but the baby was born alive. Zhang Chunhong
heard the baby cry as she lay in the operating room and asked to see her child.
The nurses refused. Her husband, Zhai Zhicheng, caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a healthy
little girl, but was told that staff had been ordered not to give them the
baby. One of the nurses told him that, even if she didn't die, the child would
be retarded because of the drug used to induce labour.
The next day Zhang Chunhong was told that the baby
was dead, and the parents returned home.
In fact, the child was still alive. On 25 April hospital director Yuan Yinghua ordered nurse Wang Weimin to starve or freeze her to death by exposing her on
the open balcony outside the abortion room.
The secret could not be kept from the hospital director, who threatened to fire
anyone who fed her. Waiting for director Yuan Yinghua
to go home, or taking advantage of times when she was busy, physicians and
nurses risked their careers to sneak nourishment to Ji
Huansheng. One nurse remarked how the staff were amazed by the strength of the child, but nurse
Wang was concerned that Ji Huansheng
could not survive indefinitely in the circumstances. She explained that, on 9
May, 2001, when a local TV journalist called, "I decided to tell the
journalist the truth because I wanted to give the baby a chance to live."
However, when the journalist arrived, Ji had been
hidden. She was found, stuffed inside a sterilization box. Ultimately, the TV
station declined to air material that was obviously both shocking and very
politically incorrect, but the story was followed up by five newspaper
reporters. On 10 May the baby was given clothing, a bottle, food and a cot, but
disappeared the day following, apparently taken to the hospital director's
office and removed by the hospital's Communist Party Secretary. Fearing for the
child's life, journalists called
She was dirty and in poor condition, her weight having fallen from 2.5kg at
birth to just 1kg. Her parents named her Ji Huansheng - "brought back to life by journalists"
- in honour of the reporters who had saved her life. The peasant family will be
burdened with a fine of up to 60,000 renminbi (about
£5,000), which they must pay if they do not want Ji Huangsheng to be an unregistered "black child",
ineligible for state welfare and education.
A consequence of the incident was a split in hospital staff. Some, who had been
threatened with pay cuts or, perhaps, feared for their careers, physically
forced journalists out of the hospital. Others petitioned for the removal of
the director, Yuan Yinghua. On 25 May, a dozen
hospital staff made a formal complaint to the police. The London Independent
asked for an interview with the head of Daoli
district public security bureau, but was refused on the grounds that the case
was "still under investigation."
The acceptance of late term and 'live birth' abortion in the medical community
in North America (Baby left to die at Vancouver General Hospital
; Born alive, left to die (Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.) and the response
of Canadian authorities in analogous situations (Foothills Hospital Now Forces
Nurses To Participate In Genetic Terminations) suggests that the treatment of Ji Huangsheng will not give rise
to legal sanctions. It is more likely that authorities will adopt preventative
measures to prevent similar situations from arising in future: for example,
injecting potassium chloride into the heart of a foetus
in utero to ensure death before the induction of labour.
In any case, the story from The London Independent illustrates two points of
interest from the perspective of freedom of conscience.
First: significant official pressure was brought to bear on medical staff to
force them to act contrary to their conscientious convictions in furtherance of
state policy. (See Chinese health care workers and the 'one-child' policy) From
from being unique to
Second: it would not be surprising if the incident at the
Chinese Government Forbids
Catholic Seminaries to Teach against Abortion Says Congressional Report
Blocked Internet Discussion of New Pope
Released on October 11, the report notes that the Chinese government interferes in the selection of Catholic bishops, a prerogative reserved to the Pope.
The Commission, consisting of nine Senators, nine members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President, reports that the transition between Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI was granted "perfunctory recognition by granting the events minimal media coverage," but added that "public security officials also increased harassment of Catholics, detaining 13 clerics." Moreover, the report indicates that "Chinese authorities also blocked discussion of the transition (between Popes) on domestic and international Web sites."
The Congressional report also notes that "The Chinese government
continues to maintain a coercive population control policy that violates
internationally recognized human rights standards in three ways. First, the
Population and Family Planning Law limits the number
of children that women may bear. Second, this law coerces compliance by
penalizing women who illegally bear a child with a ''social compensation fee,''
a fine that often exceeds an average family's annual income. Third,
although physical coercion to ensure compliance with population control
requirements is illegal in
Those local officials are encouraged in their extremism by the fact that "Local officials who fail to meet provincial and central government birth rate targets face loss of bonuses and denial of promotions."
After finding these and a host of other abuses, the commission found
"no improvement overall in human rights conditions in
However the commission was not apologetic for its report noting that it is
for the good of China and its inhabitants that the truth come out and the
needed reforms take place. "This is an honest report that takes a
comprehensive look at human rights and rule of law in
jhw
See the full report online:
http://www.cecc.gov/pages/annualRpt/annualRpt05/index.php
Chinese Breast Cancer Deaths Jump 40% since One Child Abortion Policy
According to the officially released statistics reported in China Daily, the fatality rate of breast cancer rose 38.7 percent for women living in urban areas and 39.1 percent for rural women between 1991 and 2000.
Xu Guangwei of the China Anti-Cancer Association put the increase down to stress and greater consumption of fatty food, which have been linked to cancer in many studies. A much easier explanation, however, is the communist country’s obsession with limiting its population with abortion. The link between abortion and instances of breast cancer is much better documented than that between stress and cancer.
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer points out that an identical increase in breast cancer in US women was found between the mid-1980's and 1998, “the increase took place entirely within the Roe v. Wade generation - the group of women who were under age 40 in 1973 when abortion was legalized.”
Karen Malec, the group’s spokesman said, “The
Chinese government, like the American government, isn't telling women why
they're getting more breast cancers. Here's a little clue for the Chinese
and
The connection between abortion and breast cancer, though verifiable in many studies, has been assiduously blocked, says the Coalition, for years because of politics. Most national medical associations and physicians’ organizations have accepted abortion as a great boon to women’s health and routinely accuse any report finding otherwise of “political” bias.
For more information on the medical connection between abortion and breast
cancer:
http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/start/
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46953
FAITH UNDER FIRE
50 house church leaders arrested, some beaten
Communist authorities raid meeting of pastors from 20 provinces
Posted: October 21, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Chinese communist authorities arrested 50 house church leaders from more than
20 provinces at a retreat in
Some were beaten during the Oct. 20 raid, reported China Aid Association.
According to an eyewitness report, the leaders, from independent house churches
outside government control, planned to discuss how to help the poor, orphaned
and the floating population in urban areas.
Public Security Bureau of the city of
One of the church leaders, Dai Hong, was beaten by an officer named
Among the arrested is a famous evangelist, pastor
Zhang Mingxuan, who, along with two other Christians
once ran a nursing home in
He previously was detained prior to President Bush's trip to
"It is no coincident that this kind of incident should happen again before
President Bush's upcoming visit to
"The Chinese government is systematically targeting the house church
movement in
President Bush is expected to visit
The vast majority of Christians in