A political behemoth “many times more dangerous than terrorist groups” that is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths has become a “public enemy” of the people of China, according to an activist who served time in prison in the communist nation.
Chen Guangcheng made the comments in reference to China’s one-child policy at a Heritage Foundation event recognizing the International Day of the Girl Child. He served a prison term in China for opposing the policy, which is enforced through abortion, then fled to the United States in 2012 after escaping house arrest.
Other speakers at the event were Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.
Chen rose to international acclaim in 2005 when he arranged a class-action lawsuit in China over authorities’ enforcement of the one-child policy in Linyi, Shandong province.
Under house arrest from 2005 to 2006, he later was convicted of “organizing a mob” and was sentenced to more than four years in prison. Later, he was detained under house arrest until he escaped and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2012.
“In today’s China, under the communist rule, the government can put their hand into your body, grab your baby out of your womb, and kill your baby in your face,” Chen said.
Littlejohn, whose Womens Rights Without Frontiers organization has lobbied against the policy in the United Nations, called Chen’s statement “extremely bold.”
“He described what he termed a ‘war zone,’ in which whole villages of people would sleep in the fields to escape forced abortion at the hands of the dreaded Family Planning Police,” she said. “He stated that the Central Propaganda Department had issued a media ban, so that cases of forced abortion would not be reported by the media. Further, the police department and the court system were ordered not to touch such cases, leaving victims with no redress.”
The Chinese Communist Party continues to brutalize women through the policy, Littlejohn said, but news of forced abortion rarely reaches the West due to a media ban imposed by the Chinese government.
“For every forced abortion published in the Western press, there are hundreds or thousands of women suffering in silence and obscurity,” she said “The victims of forced abortion and sterilization have nowhere to turn. They are protected by neither the police nor the court system. Their own government, which should be protecting their rights, has become their ‘public enemy.'”
Littlejohn said those “who dare to stand up for victims of the one-child policy, like Chen Guangcheng, are jailed and tortured.”
“Therefore, because we in the West have freedom of speech, we have the moral obligation to be a voice for these voiceless ones. We need to band together to end these atrocities,” she said.
Her organization has created a petition for people to oppose forced abortion.
Chen said his understanding is that in addition to the millions of forced abortion deaths in China, additional hundreds of thousands of people, “including neighbors and relatives of those forced to have an abortion,” also “have suffered.”
“Whenever there is a family planning policy implementation ordered from the government for a specific town, the neighbors and villagers are so scared they do not feel safe staying in their own houses. They will leave their own homes bringing just a few clothes, and they will stay overnight in an open field to escape from the local family planning policy officials. It seems as if they are in a warzone,” he said.
“I want to emphasize here that the Communist Party does not represent China, and especially not the Chinese people. It is just now that they have become a public enemy of the Chinese people. I believe that we have underestimated the threat from Communist regimes like the one in China. They are many times more dangerous than terrorist groups, and I believe that people only will realize this later,” he said.
WND reported Littlejohn’s reaction to an Chinese announcement that the one-child policy would be “relaxed” and couples would be allowed two children.
“The problem with the one-child policy is not the number of children ‘allowed.’ Rather, it is the fact that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is telling women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide,” she said.
“Even if all couples were allowed two children, there is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement,” said Littlejohn. “Women will still need a birth permit to have their first and second child. Women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, even up to the ninth month of pregnancy.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping had said last year that some, but not all, families would be allowed to have a second child. But the government said not even 3 percent of those eligible asked for permission. Of the 690,000 couples who did ask, permission was granted for 620,000, officials said.
The U.N. estimates that women in China have 1.66 babies, while a ratio of 2.1 is needed to sustain a population.
“The Chinese Communist Party is finally waking up to the fact that, by instituting the brutal One Child Policy for economic reasons 34 year ago, it unwittingly signed its own economic death warrant,” Littlejohn said.
“China will grow old before it grows rich. China’s population problem is not that it has too many people, but that it has too few young people.”
WND reported in March Littlejohn’s warning to the U.N. that the policy change is only a “minor adjustment.”
See the campaign aimed at ending forced abortion and the petition.
She told the U.N. that while women on many countries are mistreated, “only in China are women dragged out of their homes and forcibly aborted and sterilized by their government.”
“China’s one-child policy causes more violence against pregnant women than any other official policy on earth and any other official policy in the history of the world,” she said. “Forced abortion is official government rape.”
Littlejohn pointed out that areas of China where two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to “gendercide,” the sex-selective abortion of females.
Because of the gendercide, an estimated 37 million Chinese men will never marry.
“This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery, not only in China, but in neighboring nations as well,” she said.
Littlejohn said the Chinese Communist Party is keeping “coercion” at the core of its population control plans.
“It should be called China’s ‘Forced Abortion Policy,'” she said. “Those who care about women and girls must continue to press with persistence until forced abortion and gendercide are eradicated from the face of the earth.”
She said China’s forced-abortion policy “does not need to be modified.”
“It needs to be abolished.”
See Women’s Rights Without Frontiers explain “gendercide,” the practice of killing selected unborn because of their gender:
[jwplayer Qu5LKj36]
