R.E.A.L. attended testimony of human rights activists and of persecuted Chinese women who faced oppression and forced abortion due to the PRC Communist Party of China (CCP) regime’s “One Child Policy.” R.E.A.L. heard women in tears and pleading for the lives of their babies from the cruel and anti-human rights, anti-human life policy of the Communist China regime. To those who use distance, politics, and silence to keep the voice of these women and their very real suffering and human rights abuses from being heard, today in Washington D.C., on Capitol Hill, their voice was given a public hearing, so that world would hear, remember, and call for end to such a genocide against children, and violence against women.
Activist Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers described the horrors in China that persecutes those caught pregnant with a second child. “Women being literally dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night, or even in the middle of the day, strapped down to tables, pleading and crying, and then being forced to abort their babies.” According to human rights activist Reggie Littlejohn, the PRC CCP regime has boasted on of preventing 400 million births with its policy that allows a woman only one child. Littlejohn stated, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life on this issue. No one supports forced abortion because it’s not a choice. ” According to Littlejohn, the actual number of the millions of forced abortions is a tightly-held state secret.
In addition, chairman of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Leonard Leo stated, “Speaking softly to China about human rights is a fool’s errand. History has shown it simply does not work.”
— Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
— R.E.A.L. was at news conference where Reggie Littlejohn described this as it “causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on Earth”
–— November 10, 2009 – DC: Experts on China’s One Child Policy to Testify in Congressional Hearing
November 10, 2009 Congressional Testimony on Communist China
— Seriously Raise Forced Abortion With Chinese Leaders in Beijing — The Worst Violation of Women’s Rights in History, Rep. Chris Smith, Chairing the Hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
— Testimony of Wujian, citizen of the People’s Republic of China
— “My ‘Little Foot,’ My Lifelong Pain”
— Wujian_Testimony (Adobe Acrobat)
— Jiang Tianyong, Beijing Global Law Firm: Testimonies on Violent Implementations of the One Child Policy in Linyi City, Shandong Province, China – Specific cases of Fang Zhongxia, Hu Bingmei, Li Juan, family of Song Huahou, and reports from investigators Jiang Tianyong, Cheng Guangcheng, Yuan Weijing, Li Chunfu, Li Jian, Li Heping, Teng Biao, Guo Yushan, and the imprisonment of blind human rights activist Cheng Guangcheng for seeking to protect women for forced abortion.
— Infanticide “What if the Infant Is Still Alive after Induced Labor?” – Call by Medical Team Personnel to Puncture Fetus’ Skull and Other Atrocities
— The Consequences of Coercion: China’s One Child Policy and Violence Against Women and Girls; Reggie Littlejohn President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
— Harry Wu, Director, Laogai Research Foundation; Prepared Statement on China’s One Child Policy
— Rebiya Kadeer, President, Uyghur American Association: An Evaluation of 30 Years of the One Child Policy in China
— Associated: NDTV video on this Testimony at U.S. Congress
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Related Article from Washington Post on this Testimony at U.S. Congress
By Kathleen Parker
Washington Post
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
— “One of the few incontrovertible assertions one can reasonably make is that no one supports forced abortion.”
— “Yet, coerced abortions, as well as involuntary sterilizations, are commonplace in China, Beijing’s protestations notwithstanding. While the Chinese Communist Party insists that abortions are voluntary under the nation’s one-child policy, electronic documentation recently smuggled out of the country tells a different story.”
— “Congressional members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission heard some of that story Tuesday, two days before President Obama was slated to leave for Asia, including China, to discuss economic issues. Among evidence provided by two human rights organizations, ChinaAid and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, were tales of pregnant women essentially being hunted down and forced to submit to surgery or induced labor.”
— “Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of the Frontiers group, told the commission that China’s one-child policy ’causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on Earth.’ ”
— “I met Littlejohn for breakfast the day before the hearing. A petite wife and mother — as well as a Yale-educated lawyer — Littlejohn gave up her intellectual property practice in San Francisco after a life-altering illness to become a full-time activist for Chinese women. She is remarkably buoyant, considering the knowledge she has absorbed. Action, she says, is her way of coping with the unconscionable.”
— “Here’s the question Littlejohn insists we consider: What really happens to a woman who doesn’t have a “birth permit” and has an ‘out of plan’ pregnancy?”
— “The answer is simple and brutal: A woman pregnant without permission has to surrender her unborn child to government enforcers, no matter what the stage of fetal development.”
— “Late-term abortions are problematic, but the Chinese are nothing if not efficient. On one Web site for Chinese obstetricians and gynecologists, doctors recently traded tips in a dispassionate discussion titled: “What if the infant is still alive after induced labor?” ChinaAid provided a translation of a thread regarding an eight-month-old fetus that survived the procedure.”
— ” ‘Xuexia’ wrote: ‘Actually, you should have punctured the fetus’ skull.’ Another poster, ‘Damohuyang,’ wrote that most late-term infants died during induced labor, some lived and ‘would be left in trash cans. Some of them could still live for one to two days.’ ”
— “To be clear, some of the doctors online expressed concern for the rights of the child. Others, however, worried only about potential legal ramifications. Technically, it is illegal in China to kill a baby, one is relieved to learn, but family-planning imperatives sometimes prevail. According to a 2009 State Department report, monetary incentives and penalties are attached to population targets, creating what amounts to bounties on the unborn.”
— “As recently as July, officials of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission said that the one-child policy ‘will be strictly enforced as a means of controlling births for decades to come,’ according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.”
— “The violence of these procedures doesn’t only kill the child in some instances. In two of the cases described in a document leaked this past August, the mothers died, too. Those who dissent, meanwhile, are persecuted.”
— “Such has been the fate of activist Chen Guangcheng, who is serving a four-year sentence after exposing 130,000 forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi County, Shandong province, in 2005. Named by Time magazine as one of 2006’s top 100 people ‘who shape our world,’ Guangcheng, who is blind, was severely beaten and denied medical care the following year, according to an Amnesty International report.”
— “The one-child policy has created other problems that threaten women and girls. The traditional preference for boys has meant sex-selected abortions resulting in a gender imbalance. Today, men in China outnumber women by 37 million, a disparity that has become a driving force behind sex slavery in Asia. Exacerbating the imbalance, about 500 women a day commit suicide in China — the highest rate in the world, which Littlejohn attributes in part to coercive family planning.”
— “Obviously, the United States is in an awkward position with China, our second-largest trading partner and the largest holder of our government debt. But Littlejohn hopes Obama will “truly represent American values, including our strong commitment to human rights.” She is also calling on Planned Parenthood and NARAL to speak up for reproductive choice in China.”
— “On this much, both sides of the abortion issue can agree: Forced abortion is not a choice. Averting our gaze from China’s horrific abuse of women is.”
