Chinese seize activist

[Michelle]

Washington Post is reporting that a rural activist against forced sterilization and abortion has been seized.

Rural Activist seized

Interesting, because my friend in China said they aren't forcing abortions and sterilizations anymore. If a couple who were raised under the "one child" policy get married, they are allowed two children. Also, most people can now have two children, whether raised with siblings or not. M

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BEIJING, Sept. 6 -- Local authorities on Tuesday seized a rural activist who has been leading a high-profile legal campaign against the use of forced sterilization and abortion in China, in an apparent effort to block him from meeting with senior government officials who had expressed support for his cause.

The detention of Chen Guangcheng, 34, a blind peasant who has been preparing a class-action lawsuit to challenge population-control abuses in the eastern city of Linyi, occurred a few days after he arrived in Beijing for meetings with lawyers and journalists. He was seized just as the Chinese government opened an international legal conference here.

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Chen was seized just hours after meeting with a reporter who works for Time magazine, Tu said. Over the past few days, Chen also met with a Washington Post correspondent, diplomats from the U.S. Embassy and several lawyers in Beijing who have volunteered to help him sue officials in Linyi, a city of 10 million located about 400 miles southeast of Beijing.

In March, residents said, the Linyi government began requiring parents with two children to be sterilized and forcing women pregnant with a third child to have abortions. Officials also have been detaining family members of such people who fled, beating them and holding them hostage until their relatives return and submit to the operations, according to residents interviewed in Linyi.

Chen's attempt to organize a class-action lawsuit against Linyi was the subject of a report in The Washington Post on Aug. 27. At the time, officials in Beijing said the practices described by Linyi residents were illegal and expressed support for the lawsuit.

After publication of the article, the National Population and Family Planning Commission, the cabinet-level ministry that manages population growth in China, sent a team of officials to investigate the allegations in Linyi. The investigators tried to meet with Chen, but he had already traveled to Beijing.

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Provincial authorities wield tremendous power in China's one-party political system and often disobey ministries in the central government. But the seizure of Chen represents an unusually public act of defiance, which could embarrass the governing Communist Party as it seeks to project an image that it has abandoned coercive methods to limit population growth.

Local officials throughout China began using forced abortions and compulsory sterilization to enforce the one-child policy in the early 1980s, but the central government since the mid-1990s has tried to eliminate such practices and move toward a more flexible system of economic rewards and fines to slow population growth.

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[aldona]

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Interesting, because my friend in China said they aren't forcing abortions and sterilizations anymore. If a couple who were raised under the "one child" policy get married, they are allowed two children. Also, most people can now have two children, whether raised with siblings or not. M

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Looks like either you or your friend are being fed spin.

Only a couple of years ago, a Chinese woman sought asylum in Australia on the grounds that she was pregnant and if she was forced to return, she would be forced to abort her child (which was her second).

The Australian government (as usual) denied her asylum claim, and she was deported back to China and forced to undergo an abortion. At 8 and a half months of pregnancy.

It was all over the media here and there was a huge outcry. I think it was the first indication the Australian public had about the inhumanity of our country's refugee policies.

aldona

[Michelle]

Well, I know that the two-child policy for single-raised people is in place. I'm not so sure about two-child for a non-single-raised parent. My friend has siblings as does her husband, but she is seriously contemplating having a second child. At least where she lives (NE), this is not a case where she'd be forced to have an abortion. Minorities have always been allowed to have 2 children. Countryside people have always been allowed to have 2 children.

I think as the article points out, central government may make some rules, but the local/county/provincial governments may make their own rules more stringent, as it appears happened in the case I referenced above. Central government was willing to meet with the guy, but the locals took him away.

M