It took a blind human rights activist to make the people in Chinas Shandong Province see their right to speak out against grave human rights abuses by local government officials. In his campaign to stop the use of forced abortions and sterilization in the name of Chinas one-child policy, Chen Guangcheng, 34, became a hero.

Forced abortions and sterilizations

Chen had been put under house arrest by local officials and beaten up at least twice. Since he has been missing, his relatives were intimidated and harassed. In a report by Xin Fei, villagers were said to be threatened, forced to make statements against Chen, and repeatedly warned against releasing information about the activist. Some of Chens supporters were arrested and sent to forced labour.

Chen first attracted the attention of local authorities in September 2005 when he went to Beijing to talk to central government officials and journalists about the abuses committed in Shandong. A local measure was enforced in March last year that compelled parents with two children to be sterilized and women pregnant with a third child to have an abortion, regardless of the fetus gestation age.

Over 120,000 people in the province had already undergone forced abortions and sterilizations in six months. It is a crazy and merciless situation, Chen said. Recently, no one was really enforcing the
one-child policy. But the population in Shandong has ballooned (and) I think the provincial government put pressure on local family planning departments who have just gone nuts.

Abducted, beaten up, and gone missing

Days after his arrival in Beijing, Chen was abducted by plainclothes security officers from Shandong and brought back to Linyi. There, he was put under house arrest despite not having formal charges filed against him.

It was like a kidnapping, lawyer Jiang Tianyong said. We knew he was abducted by Shandong officials even though they have no jurisdiction in Beijingthey wanted him out of (the city), but mainly they just wanted to punish him. Jiang was part of the legal team representing Chen.

Chen was beaten up twiceon October 4, he was found bleeding on the streets when lawyers came to negotiate his house arrest. The second attack came when he tried to greet friends who visited him. Nine people, including two local officials, beat him up and even though the assault left him bleeding and in pain, he was refused medical aid. His life is not in danger. His injury is not a big deal, a local official reported.

On March 11, village guards beat up Chens older brother Chen Guangyu. Chen went to his aid together with a friend, and the three of them were later arrested. The two mens families received notice where they were detained, but officials remained silent about Chens whereabouts. He has not been seen or heard from since then.

He is right

Yu Xuejun, Chinas National Population and Family Planning Commission spokesperson, admitted that some persons concerned in a few counties and townships of Linyi did commit practices that violated the law. However, when central government officials sent a team to investigate Chens allegations, local officials prevented them from entering the village. And despite the commissions admission of the overzealousness of local authorities, only one has been detained, leaving the higher-level officials untouched.

The human rights group Amnesty International, in an October 14 press release, denounced the brutal measures in the province as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment amounting to torture. Time Magazine also called it one of the most brutal mass sterilization and abortion campaigns in years.

No formal law degree

Chen became blind when he was a child, and as was Chinas policy, he was not allowed to get a law degree. However, he did not let his disability prevent him from studying on his own, and in time, he learned enough to advise people on legal matters. He was known for years to campaign for the rights of farmers and the disabled.

So when villagers approached Chen to do something about the forced abortion and sterilization campaign in the province, he agreed to file a case on their behalf. Someone has to fight for people with no voice, Chen said in a Time Magazine interview hours before his abduction. I guess that person is me.

Learning to speak out

Since Chen disappeared, some villagers had become afraid and even claimed no knowledge of Chen when asked by reporters. There are others, however, who have vowed to carry on his struggle.

Xia Jian Dong, 40, for example, whose wife was forced to have an abortion in her sixth month, used to call himself a model citizen. But after what happened to their familythey were fined U.S. $90 (equivalent to two months wages for him) for going into hiding and his wife was herself arrested a week after the abortion to force a sister-in-law to undergo the same procedurehe said that he has learned to speak out.

Leaders here have tried to intimidate us frompursuing our case, he said. Theyve said well give you some compensationbut what they've done is arrest those trying to represent us, like Chen. So we will continue our fight.

Sources:

Amnesty International. (14 October 2005). Press Release: Fear of torture and ill-treatment/arbitrary detention. Retrieved 14 May 2006 from <http://t2web.amnesty.r3h.net/library/index/ENGASA170372005?open&of=ENG-CHN>.

Beech, H. (30 April 2006). Chen Guangcheng: A blind man with legal vision. Retrieved 10 May 2006 from <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1186887,00.html>.

Catholic Online. (23 October 2005). Chinas second thoughts about family planning: Amid new doubts, harsh policies linger. Retrieved 13 May 2006 from <http://www.yourcatholicvoice.org/print.php?print=news&ID=2662>.

Kang Lim, B. (25 October 2005). Blind China activist beaten up againgroup. Retrieved 13 May 2006 from <http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-10-25T082450Z_01_KNE530229_RTRUKOC_0_UK-CHINA-ACTIVIST.xml&archived=False>.

Pocha, J. (25 October 2005). Law is dead: Pressure to enforce Chinas one-child policy has led to horrific crimes by local governments. Retrieved 13 May 2006 from <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/about/author/5>.

Xin, F. (02 April 2006). Blind human rights activist missing for over 20 days. Retrieved 10 May 2006 from <http://www.theepochtimes.com/tools/printer.asp?id=39997>.

Chinas one-child policy

China first implemented the one-child policy in 1979 as a solution to the countrys overpopulation problem. However, the term one-child policy applied to certain sectors only, such as government workers, and those living in urban areas. In some provinces, rural families are allowed second children especially if the first one was a girl, and minority groups are allowed more than two.

For a pregnancy to be legal, the woman has to seek permission from local population authorities. Families with only one child get numerous economic incentives and other rewards, while violators lose housing or school benefits and made to pay substantial fines and taxes.

Contraception and abortion are said to be the backbone of implementing the policy. Intrauterine devices and sterilizations are said to be used 90% of the time, and most women are not offered a choice when it comes to contraception methods.

A study by Finnish and Chinese researchers Elina Hemminki, Zhuochun Wu, et al., the number of induced abortions increased rapidly after 1979, with some reports suggesting that most aborted illegal pregnancies were forced on the women. When ultrasound scanning became available, sex-selective abortions became common, resulting to a high number of female fetuses being aborted.

China has taken steps to avoid the continued selective abortion of females. The growing scarcity of women in the country has resulted to kidnapping and trafficking of women for marriage. Sex-selective abortion had already been declared illegal, but there are further plans to ban the use of ultrasound machines to detect the sex of fetuses.

Recorded induced abortions in China, 19751999 (Hemminki et al.)

Induced abortions* Live births* Ratio