Josephine Guy
Director of Governmental Affairs
America 21
House Committee on International Relations
October 17, 2001
Honorable Chairman, members of this committee: My investigation in China began on September 27, 2001. With three others — two translators and a photographer — our investigation lasted a total of four days.
During this time, we had the opportunity to interview many women about methods of family planning which are enforced in their county. Some choked back tears as they told of the abuse they suffer as a result of coercive policies of family planning, while others flocked to tell us their stories of coercion.
The interviews we conducted were recorded in notebooks, on audio and videotape, and additional photographic evidence was obtained. The abuses we documented during this investigation are recent, ongoing, rampant and unrelenting. And they exist in a county where the United Nations Population Fund claims that women are free to determine the timing and spacing of pregnancy.
On the first day of our investigation, we interviewed women in a family planning clinic about a mile from the county office of the UNFPA. We interviewed a 19-year-old there who told us she was too young to be pregnant according to the unbending family planning policy. While she was receiving a non-voluntary abortion in an adjacent room, her friends told us that she indeed desired to keep her baby, but she had no choice, since the law forbids.
At another location not far from there, a woman testified that she became pregnant despite an earlier attempt by family planning officials to forcibly sterilize her. That attempt failed. She became pregnant, and was forcibly sterilized a second time by family planning doctors and officials. Had she refused, she told us on videotape, then family planning crews would have torn her house down.
We were told of efforts by many women to hide their pregnancies from government officials, in an attempt to escape forced abortion, so they could give birth to a child they desired. We were told of women having to hide their pregnancies and their children, to escape retribution from officials for not having an abortion. We were told of the many so-called “black” children in the region who are born out of accord with local birth regulations. We were also told of the punishments inflicted on those who wish to freely determine for themselves the timing and spacing of pregnancy.
We were told of the non-voluntary use of IUDs and mandatory examinations so that family planning officials can ensure that women have not removed IUDs in violation of policy, and the strict punishment which result from non-compliance of this coercive and inhumane policy.
One woman we interviewed had heroically escaped forced abortion by hiding in a nearby village. As a result, she testified, three people in her mother’s family, and six people in her mother-in-law’s family, were arrested and thrown into prison. They were released after four months imprisonment, only after a crippling fine — of 17,000 RMB, (about $2,000 US), equal to about three year’s wages) — was paid to family planning officials. Today this wwoman must pay another 17,000 RMB before her child can be legally registered and permitted to attend school. And when her relatives were in jail, the Office of Family Planning sent a crew of officials armed with jack hammers to their homes. They destroyed their homes and belongings with jack hammers.
All interviews were conducted within a few miles from a UNFPA office, in a county where UNFPA contends that coercion does not exist. In a county where UNFPA claims that only voluntarism prevails, we were told by a victim of abuse that family planning policies involving coercion and force are stricter today than ever before.
Through discrete contact made with local officials, we located the County Government Building. Within this building, we located the Office of Family Planning. And within the Office of Family Planning, we located the UNFPA office. Through local officials, we learned the UNFPA works in and through this Office of Family Planning. We photographed the UNFPA office desk, which faces — in fact touches — a desk of the Chinese Office of Family Planning.
We confirmed that all of the locations of the interviews that were conducted fell within this County and under the governance of the County bureaucracy housed in the County Government Building.
Prior to my arrival in China, advance research had been done regarding family planning policies and operations in other regions. Preparations had been made for investigating these regions. But due to the information already obtained, and mindful of potential risks and dangers to the individuals interviewed, it was decided that I should return home.
Honorable Chairman and members of this committee: in this county where UNFPA operates — where UNFPA insists that only voluntarism exists — we were told by victims of coercion themselves that there is, in fact, no trace of voluntarism in this county. There is only coercion, in abundant supply, in this county where UNFPA operates — from within the Office of Family Planning.
Mr. Chairman: Thank you and God bless.
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Video of testimonies
(3 minutes 45 seconds)
(Videotaped testimony obtained September 2001 of woman telling her story of forced sterilization and how the policy has gotten stricter in recent years in a county where UNFPA operates. The interview was given a few miles from UNFPA office.)
Questioner: “If you violate the population control regulations by having too many children, what happens to you?”
Woman: “When I had my children, things were not as strict. Right now, things are very, very strict.”
Questioner: “What happens to you if you give birth to another child?”
Woman: “You want to have another child! You think it’s that easy to give birth (laughing incredulously)!”
Questioner: “Would someone come to your house and take you in by force in for an abortion?”
Woman: “Yes. But they don’t need to use force. They simply require you to go.”
Questioner: “And if you don’t go?
Woman (astonished): “They require you to go and you don’t go?”
Questioner: “What if you say you don’t want to go?”
Woman (incredulously): “What reason could you give [for resisting.] Giving birth to an extra child is difficult, very, very difficult to have a child.”
Questioner: “But you yourself had three children. How did this happen?”
Woman: “First I had two. Then seven years later I had another baby boy. They had already tied my tubes and I had another boy.”
Questioner: “After you had an operation? After they tied your tubes? How did they know you had a baby?”
Woman: “They found out. Someone told them.”
Questioner: “Then the family planning workers came to your house. Did a whole troop of them come?”
Woman: “A lot of them came. Many, many people.”
Questioner: “What if you hid?”
Woman: “That wouldn’t work. They would tear down my house.” (Points at the ceiling). “They would wreck it.”
Narrator: So she was sterilized a second time, at the government’s insistence, and there have been no more children.
(Photo of woman, with child, interviewed September 2001, a short distance from UNFPA office, in county where UNFPA operates and claims coercion does not exist. This interview was recorded on audio tape.)
Narrator: This woman was pregnant with her second child, and the authorities wanted her to abortÂ
Woman: “I was four-and-a-half months pregnant. They wanted me to report to the hospital for an abortion but I refused to go. I went into hiding in my mother’s village. Then my brother, my older sister, and my younger sister were all arrested. I had no choice but to go somewhere else to hide. They arrested three people in my mother’s family but didn’t destroy any homes. They arrested six people in my mother-in-law’s family and destroyed three homes.”
(Photo of man and damaged home, interviewed September 29, a short distance from UNFPA office, in county where UNFPA operates and claims coercion does not exist. This interview was recorded on audiotape.)
Narrator: When they couldn’t find the woman, they attacked her home—and the homes of her relatives—with jackhammers. Her father-in-law describes the damage.
Man: “Look at this. All of the doors and windows destroyed. Here’s a big hole that they knocked in the wall. It took forty bags of cement to repair the holes.”
(Photo of women in waiting room, taken a short distance from UNFPA office. PRI investigators spoke with several women in this photo who confirmed that forced abortion exists in this county where UNFPA operates.)
Narrator: Here in a hospital waiting room, a pregnant woman waits for an abortion. Too young at 19 years of age to get married—the minimum age is 23–she has been ordered to report for an abortion. As she disappears into the operating room, we ask herr three friends here with her: “Would she like to keep her baby?” “Oh, yes,” they all replied, “But the law forbids it.”
