Re: Open Letter to President Xi Jinping, 34th Anniversary of China’s One Child Policy
By Reggie LittleJohn
Posted on September 25th, 2014
To President Xi Jinping:
Today is the 34th anniversary of the official institution of China’s barbaric One Child Policy, which has caused incalculable suffering to hundreds of millions of women and families of China. It is time for this policy to end. It will not work to replace it by a ‘two-child policy’ as some of your advisors may be suggesting. Rather, the One Child Policy should be eradicated from the face of the earth, because it has caused more violence toward women and girls than any other official policy on earth, and any other official policy in the history of the world. Your government has boasted that it has “prevented” more than 400 million births through this policy. These births have been prevented through forced abortions, involuntary sterilizations, confiscatory “terror fines,” gendercide and infanticide – all in violation of international human rights law.
The One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth.
The One Child Policy is China’s war on women. Any discussion of women’s rights, or human rights, would be a charade if forced abortion in China is not front and center. It does not matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice. Here is a video in which former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, strongly condemns coercive family planning in China. http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=hillary_clinton
In the past year there has been much suffering caused by the One Child Policy. We are aware that the cases that make it to the West are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. For every family that posts their experience of heartbreak on the internet – and thereby risks persecution by the Chinese Communist Party — there are thousands or millions who suffer silently. This year, we have seen a tragic rise in murder and suicide associated with the crushing “social compensation fees,” which can cost up to fourteen times a person’s annual salary, an amount the vast majority of Chinese citizens cannot afford. If the parents are unable to pay these “terror fines,” their children will be denied “hukou,” or household registration. Without hukou, children are ineligible for healthcare or education. They become illegal aliens in their own land. “Chinese Mother, fined $54,200 for Flouting One-child Policy, Sues Police.” http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-chinese-mother-fined-54200-one-child-policy-sues/1803992.html 12/5/13
- In Linyi City, Shandong Province – the hometown of blind activist Chen Guangcheng – a student at Linyi University gave birth to a baby girl in a University lavatory, left her baby stuffed down the toilet pipe, and fled the scene. A reported comment on social media site Weibo stated, “I find the image of a young woman giving birth in the loo, cleaning herself up and then going back to her room to carry on studying a particularly worrying one and a sign of the sort of throwaway society that we live in nowadays.” “Chinese baby girl abandoned in university lavatory by her mother is rescued.”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11105358/Chinese-baby-girl-abandoned-in-university-lavatory-by-her-mother-is-rescued.html
- In China’s Guangxi Region, a man stabbed to death two government workers after they told him he could not register his fourth child because he did not pay the “social compensation fee.” He injured four other workers, including severing the hand of one. “Crazed Chinese father-of-four stabs two government officials to death over one child policy.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2376771/Chinese-father-kills-1-child-policy-officials-registering-4th-child.html 7/24/13. (Although this incident happened before August 1, 2013, it happened so close to the deadline that it was not included in our 2013 report, so we have included it here.)
Read more HERE: http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1801
Reggie Littlejohn is Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, an international coalition to expose and oppose forced abortion, gendercide and sexual slavery in China. Reggie also led the international effort to free blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in the United States on May 19, 2012. She and Chen Guangcheng appeared together on a Voice of America broadcast on January 31, 2013.
Image of poster by: kattebelletje on https://www.flickr.com/photos/kattebelletje/3339610922/