Inconceivable Russians; Sri Lankan population atrocities
A recent report from the Russian State statistics Committee indicated that Russia's population continued to decline in the first six months of 1996, the inevitable result of too few marriages and births.
According to the Committee, the total population fell to 141.1 million, a drop from the 148 million recorded at the end of 1995. The Committee reported that there were only 9.1 births per 1,000 people during the first half of 1996, compared to a rate of 9.5 births per 1,000 during the same period in 1995. A rising number of divorces also contributed to the less hospitable environment for child bearing.
Since the late 1980s, Russia's population has been falling steadily due to the economic unrest gripping the country and the resultant sharp declines in health and living standards. (According to US Census Bureau's World Population Profile: 1996, in 1995 Russia experienced a population decline of more than 900,000 people.) (“Russian population declining,” AP, Moscow, 30 September 1996, printed in The (Baltimore) Sun, l October 1996.)
Another factor contributing to the declining Russian population and decreasing birthrate is the rapidly rising incidence of venereal disease which has reached near “epidemic proportion.”
The Russian Ministry of Health, at a Moscow conference convened to address the problem, announced that “syphilis [now infected] 177 out of every 100,000 Russians” in comparison to the “European average [rate] of three per 100,000.”
Health officials attributed the explosion of venereal disease to the rise of unregulated “sex services,” which are widely advertised in newspapers, and the lack of education for those most at risk, including the sexually promiscuous and intravenous drug users. With the nation's health system in disarray, and a limping pharmaceutical industry which produces inadequate quantities of often ineffective anti-VD medicines, the occurrence of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, has soared since the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
Modern treatments from foreign countries are difficult to find outside Moscow or St. Petersburg, and are too expensive for most Russians. [“Russia faces syphilis epidemic,” UPI, Moscow, 22 October.)
Sri Lankan population atrocities
In the Indian Ocean island state of Sri Lanka, female plant workers are being forced to undergo sterilization at government run clinics by health workers who are “concerned only with meeting official [population] targets.”
Researcher Padma Kodituwakku of the Colombo-based “Women and Media Collective,” produced the study which discovered the “dark side” to the governments program to keep the country's birth rate in check. Each of the sterilized women was paid 500 Rupees —US $12.50 — to undergo the surgery, “ligation and resection of the [fallopian] tube.”
In the remote hill districts where the islands tea plantation are located, the surgeries are usually performed by “assistant health practitioners” who, although doing the work of doctors, hold no medical degree and are merely health workers.
The LTR operation, first introduced in Sri Lanka in the l950s became the most widely used population control method in government clinics and hospitals throughout the island.
Kodituwakku's research revealed that the predominately Sinhalese speaking health workers used “subtle coercions” to force minority Tamil-speaking women to agree to the operation to foil the birth of their third child. In every case investigated the woman was made to feel guilt for having so many children; they were “ignorant and irresponsible breeders” whose reproduction needed to be curbed.
Moreover, although doctors advised bed rest and adequate nourishment after the operation, the illiterate plantation women walked from surgery and back to work. The impoverished women could ill afford the loss of a day's wage. Numerous post-surgery complications, including hemorrhage and fatigue, were reported, along with subsequent miscarriages. (“Study reveals dark side to Sri Lanka's population control,” Interpress Service Colombo, 19 December.)
