On to Beijing! — Maybe
Washington Post columnists, Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein, have reported complications confronting participants at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (Washington Post, 18 May 1995). The United Nations open appeasement of China, a nation known for its human rights violations, is at odds with the U.N, public claims for the promotion of peace and democracy. This fundamental contradiction provides grounds for women’s concerns that the U.N. could fail to represent their best interests in Beijing.
As Anderson and Binstein report, the surprising thing is that “U.N. officials thought it appropriate in the first place to let China host a conference aimed at improving human rights around the globe.” The Chinese have “moved to exclude” delegates ‘“from Tibet and Taiwan, lesbian organizations and others.” The Post column also says that conference planners in New York have told them the Chinese “are trying to come up with ‘red tape’ reasons why a few anti-abortion NGO groups cannot attend.”
China specialist, Steven Mosher, assures those attending the Beijing conference that the Chinese are “meticulous planners.” The decision of the Chinese therefore, to move the women’s NGO Forum to Huarirou, almost an hour’s drive from Beijing on a winding, two lane road, is well-deliberated.
Chinese prisoners as involuntary donors
Modem medical advances in China appear to be characterized by the same abandonment of ethical values which have surfaced in the Chinese coerced abortion and sterilization program.
A great demand for human organs among high Communist Party officials as well as the development of traffic in human organs in Hong Kong and other countries, has fueled a search for marketable organs in China. A convenient source of donors has been found among executed death-row prisoners. A staff member at Number 7 People’s Hospital described the procedure: “We make arrangements with the executioner to shoot in the head so that the prisoner dies very quickly, instantly, and the survival rate of organs is considerably higher .… [Once] a prisoner is shot,” he continued, “he no longer exists as a human being.” Fees for a kidney have been reported as high as $30,000 at Number 7 People’s Hospital.
Police Commander, Yang Guang, in Beijing said executed prisoner’s families are not allowed to pick up the bodies. Almost every corpse is cut open, organs are removed, and the bodies are cremated” (“A Grim Harvest in China’s Prisons,” World Press Review, June 1995, 22–3).
U.S. Congressional testimony on China’s population program
A hearing was held before the U.S. Congress on China’s coercive population control program. The Clinton Administration was charged with retreating “in every aspect of fundamental human rights in China.” The Clinton Administration removed a ban on U.S. funding of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 1993, and has granted over $40 million to the organization, in spite of its support of the draconian Chinese program.
China specialist, John Aird, formerly with the U.S. Census Bureau, testified: “The U.S. government’s decision to support UNFPA, while at the same time condemning forced abortion, is a facade .… The Chinese know it’s an American publicity stunt and they continue to use the money as they see fit,” said Aird. Aird noted, “The one-child policy imposes serious hardship on parents whose only child is a girl, and this is one of the major reasons why rural couples sometimes resort to infanticide if their first child is a daughter…and abort a pregnancy if it is a female .…”
Nicholas Eberstadt, a visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population Development Studies and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, testified that the coercive aspects of the China program are “beyond dispute.” In his statement submitted for the record, Eberstadt noted that in China, population education takes place by gathering villagers into meetings with soldiers, police, and other law enforcement officials who announce target levels for births. “This is not an approach designed for a voluntary response,” he said. He also reported that in China, the birth ratio is 118.5 boys born for every 100 girls, a marked difference from the worldwide ratio of 106 boys for every 100 girls. The widely divergent birth ratio in China reveals a missing generation of girls, said Eberstadt.
U.S. to legislate against funding UNFPA
As reported out of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, a funding bill for the United Nations Population Fund was reduced from $50 million for 1995 to a new low of $13 million. Conditions attached to the legislation stated: “none of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this division are authorized to be available for any organization…which conducts, provides funds to, or otherwise assists any program or any government agency within the People’s Republic of China relating to population control or family planning, unless the President certifies….that in the 12 months preceding certification, there have been no credible reports that abortions have occurred as the result of coercion…” (Rep. Chris Smith’s bill H.R. 1564 incorporated into H.R. 1561. Sponsored by Rep. Ben Gilman).
Fetuses as health food in China
Human fetuses are being consumed as a health food in China, with one state-run clinic giving them away free to women who consider them a tonic, according to the Hong Kong Eastern Express. The fetuses, typically a few months old, are the product of abortions performed across the border from Hong Kong, in Shenzhen.
A doctor at the city’s Sin Hua clinic was quoted as saying, “They can make your skin smoother, your body stronger, and are good for the kidneys.” Personally the doctor added, she liked her fetuses with pork soup.
