China: Pregnant woman's flight from abortion squad

Apr 022008
 

In Zhubao township in the eastern province of Shandong, family planning officials detained and beat the sister of one pregnant woman who had already given birth to one child, the family told RFA’s Cantonese service.

The woman, who lives near Linyi city, where family planning abuses have already been widely documented, is eight months pregnant. She went into hiding with her husband to escape the forced abortion which she says would otherwise be inevitable. When the authorities couldn’t find her, they detained her elder sister.

“After they took her away they were asking her questions about our other sister [the pregnant woman],” a younger sister told reporter Grace Kei Lai-see. Continue reading »

China: Family planning abuses return in Shandong

Apr 012008
 

China has recently announced its family planning policies are here to stay. This report from RFA’s Mandarin service finds out about the situation in Linyi city and Yinan county in the eastern province of Shandong, three years after civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng made his first blistering expose of human rights abuses under the one-child policy:

Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in August 2006 for “damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic.”

His writings, which blew the whistle on the use of forced abortions and other abuses in Linyi city and his home county of Yinan, were widely distributed on the Internet and read by many in China. His wife, Yuan Weijing, told RFA reporter Wen Jian:

It is just the same as it always was here. Continue reading »

China: Population controls to stay in place

Mar 142008
 

 

Translated by Chen Ping.

计生委会主任表示计划生育政策不会调整

RFA Washington – Han Qing reports on March 10:

China’s National Family Planning Committee Chairman Zhang Weiqing recently said the present family planning policy of China would not change. He said in the next decade, China’s birth rate will be surging, forming a small upwards curve in population increase projections. If China changes birth control policy now, there will be even more people around compared with the small surge currently predicted. Continue reading »

Wife of Shandong activist prevented from visiting, German TV crew attacked

Jan 242008
 

Jan 24, Yinan county, Shandong. From RFA’s Mandarin service (ZH):

Yuan Weijing and her two-year-old daughter were pulled back home suddenly while they were on their way to nearby Linyi municipal jail to visit blind family planning activist Chen Guangcheng. Four journalists from a German television station were waiting for her not far from the family’s home in Dongshigu village. They were set upon and beaten by some of the security officers guarding Wei.

At 4.30 p.m. local time on Jan. 24, the German TV crew, consisting of three men and one woman, took up their positions outside the Chen family home Continue reading »