Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Chinese Abortion Whistleblower Under Siege
From The Times Online via Mark Nicodemo
A disturbing story and a real hero for the Culture of Life.
HORRIFYING revelations of forced abortions and compulsory sterilisation in China embarrassed the Beijing government last week just as President Hu Jintao took the international stage.
The exposure of practices that break China’s own laws governing birth control was the work of a blind man who has led a campaign to bring officials to justice for their crimes.
However, Chen Guancheng, 34, the campaigner, is under house arrest this weekend in Linyi, a city of 10m people where family planning officials have committed the worst abuses documented in recent years. All involve poor people in and around Linyi, which lies in Shandong province, some 400 miles southeast of Beijing.
They have described brutal coercion that started last March when the local authorities panicked over the number of “unplanned births”.
The local officials that Guancheng has accused have come down on the blind activist with both feet:
...in his determination to bring Shandong’s party officials to book, Chen broke a political taboo. He travelled to Beijing, met American diplomats and talked to the US media. Reaction was swift.
On September 6 a group of men attacked him in Beijing and threw him into a car. The abductors were security officials from Linyi who had pursued Chen to the capital. They were obliged by Beijing police to release him and he was put on a train back to Linyi.
There he remains, by his own account under siege in his home. The police have rigged up lights to keep watch, ordered taxi drivers not to pick him up, seized his home computer and cut off his telephone.
Spread the word, Chen Guancheng deserves our support!
Crossposted at ProLifeBlogs
A disturbing story and a real hero for the Culture of Life.
HORRIFYING revelations of forced abortions and compulsory sterilisation in China embarrassed the Beijing government last week just as President Hu Jintao took the international stage.
The exposure of practices that break China’s own laws governing birth control was the work of a blind man who has led a campaign to bring officials to justice for their crimes.
However, Chen Guancheng, 34, the campaigner, is under house arrest this weekend in Linyi, a city of 10m people where family planning officials have committed the worst abuses documented in recent years. All involve poor people in and around Linyi, which lies in Shandong province, some 400 miles southeast of Beijing.
They have described brutal coercion that started last March when the local authorities panicked over the number of “unplanned births”.
The local officials that Guancheng has accused have come down on the blind activist with both feet:
...in his determination to bring Shandong’s party officials to book, Chen broke a political taboo. He travelled to Beijing, met American diplomats and talked to the US media. Reaction was swift.
On September 6 a group of men attacked him in Beijing and threw him into a car. The abductors were security officials from Linyi who had pursued Chen to the capital. They were obliged by Beijing police to release him and he was put on a train back to Linyi.
There he remains, by his own account under siege in his home. The police have rigged up lights to keep watch, ordered taxi drivers not to pick him up, seized his home computer and cut off his telephone.
Spread the word, Chen Guancheng deserves our support!
Crossposted at ProLifeBlogs
papijoe 6:24 AM
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