China seizes Harry Wu, American citizen
Naturalized American citizen. Harry Wu was seized entering China at the border in Kazakhstan. Mr. Wu was traveling on a valid United States passport and a visa issued by the Chinese Embassy in the US. Wu had spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps, charged as a counter-revolutionary for raising questions about Chinese communism. He was released in 1979 and became a US citizen in 1994. Both his parents were killed by the Chinese communists.
Driven by concern for his fellow inmates who remained behind, Wu has returned to China periodically. Media stories of prisoner executions and the sale of prisoner’s organs for trans- plants in China reveal the tragic conditions there.
Human rights groups and members of the US Congress have urged the cancellation of a planned trade mission to China and the postponement of two World Bank loans, totaling $660 million for highway and hydroelectric projects. Mile Jendrzejczyk, director for Human Rights/Asia said that the White House should seek support for Mr. Wu’s release from American companies doing business in China. “If ‘commercial diplomacy’ means anything,” he said, “responsible members of the corporate community should be doing everything they can to convince the Chinese that respect for human rights is fundamental to doing business in China” (“Prisoner’s case strains US-China ties,” The New York Times, 11 July 1995).
The Clinton Administration’s uncertain attitudes on human rights does not bode well for Mr. Wu. If Mr. Wu is tried on espionage for revealing Chinese “state secrets,” he could be denied a public hearing and a proper defense. The charge of espionage could be punishable by death.
Protecting US citizens at the Fourth World Women’s Conference (FWWC)
Questions referring to Harry Wu‘s situation have been raised repeatedly at the US State Department briefings on Beijing. The women planning to attend the FWWC were told they should not gather in groups of four or five on the street in Beijing because they might be suspected of holding “p0litical meetings.” ‘When one woman asked whether a gathering of three or four in a hotel room for private prayer could be considered illegal, the answer from the State Department representative was, “That question is germane.” The question was never fully answered, however. Assurances from the US Consulate that they would “visit” anyone arrested while they were in jail were not reassuring either.
New grounds for asylum in US
A recent decision by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) concerning political asylum creates guidelines that take into account specific types of persecution suffered by women only.
Rape, domestic abuse, infanticide, genital mutilation, slavery, forced abortion and forced marriages are examples of gender-based discrimination that may provide reason to grant asylum. But claimants will have to show how their political beliefs are at odds with those in power, and as a result of those differences how they face persecution sanctioned by their governments.
Recently, the INS granted asylum to a Haitian woman, a victim of gang-rape. Government soldiers attacked her because she supported then-exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In another case, a Jordanian woman received asylum because her husband beat her and the government refused to help her, in effect, sanctioning his behavior (“New grounds for asylum.” The Earth Times, 15-29 June 1995).
Chinese women who fled the Chinese forced population control program have not been so fortunate. A congressional hearing was held during July by Congressman Chris Smith to call attention to their plight. The women face deportation by the Clinton Administration. Several have been accepted for asylum by Ecuador.
Philippine woman fatally ill from tetanus toxoid
Victoria Sarlatan, a 36-year old woman and mother of five, is fighting the fatal stages of TB meningitis four weeks after receiving Tetanus Toxoid vaccine. Tests are not presently conducted on women for allergies or complicating factors before the women are injected. Sarlatan’s meningitis is not viewed as resulting from the injection, but health practitioners are concerned about the lack of medical examination of women prior to massive vaccinations in the nation. Over 3.5 million women have been injected in the Philippines in the last two years (“Woman who got vaccine fatally ill,” weekend edition, ISYU, 30 June-2 July 1995).
The Philippines has been embroiled in a lengthy dispute over the possible combination of anti-fertility drugs with tetanus injections. A class-action suit has been filed against the Department of Health by Philippine women who have been tested for the presence of anti-fertility drugs after receiving Tetanus injections. Women have also reported miscarriages, bleeding and other side effects after receiving the vaccine.
Iran says human rights must be Islamic
Rejecting a resolution by the UN Human Rights Commission censoring Tehran for alleged abuses, Iran said Western values could not be imposed on the world’s one billion Moslems. Iran’s judicial Chief Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi asked in a Friday prayer sermon broadcast Tehran radio, “Who says the human rights drafted by the West should be valid for the whole world?” The UN Human rights forum passed a resolution condemning Iran for rights violations including torture and excessive use of the death penalty on a vote of 28 to 8 with 17 abstentions. Yazdi said it was passed under pressure from Western powers. He said Iran insisted on maintaining Islamic laws that, for example, stipulates the death penalty for crimes such as rape. Some rights insisted upon by the West were seen as prostitution by Moslems, Yazdi said, in an apparent reference to UN criticism of the situation of women in Iran (Tehran, Iran, 10 March 1995, Reuter).
Australia legalizes euthanasia:
An Australian territory passed a law to let terminally ill patients end their lives with a doctor’s help. Religious groups and aborigines had strongly resisted the move towards physician-assisted suicide.
The Northern Territory law requires diagnoses from a physician and a psychiatrist stating those who want to end their lives are both terminally ill and sane. Patients from other parts of Australia can travel to the territory for euthanasia (“Euthanasia legalized,” The Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, IA, 25 May 1995).
Is delayed motherhood good for society?
At a gathering of the American Fertility Society held in San Antonio. The speaker, Dorothy Mitchell-Leef, a prominent reproductive endocrinologist, stood up and raised the question everyone else has been prepared to ask. Mitchell-Leef said what had not before heard publicly expressed: she claimed that “modem American women have been sold a bill of goods.” She pointed out that American women had been encouraged to believe that they could start a family just as easily at age 38 as at 22, perhaps more easily, because at that age they would be financially better off.
Mitchell-Leef insists that picture is false. She said that it was time for doctors to “begin telling women that if having children was a high priority, they should think of having them earlier in life rather than later.” Her audience of professional American women who had experienced firsthand the “grief felt by women whose infertility treatments had failed, burst into applause.”
American women have been told for years by both “doctors and authoritative voices” in the culture that they can comfortably put off having children until their mid-thirties, or even later. Medical advances — injected hormones, in vitro fertilization, screening of genetically damaged fetuses — made the usual biological limits seem old-fashioned.
A French study, conducted during the 70s, a study of women who had infertile husbands and were trying to get pregnant through artificial insemination, showed that the chances of conception diminished sharply with age. Fertility showed a considerable drop after the age of 30 and a sharp decline after 35. In response to the data, two scholars wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine that “new guidelines for counseling on reproduction may have to be formulated” (Scott McConnell, “Delayed motherhood: Is it good for society?” New York Post, 24 May 1995).
DOH Embarrassment in the Philippines
The Philippine Department of Health is having a difficult time explaining the excesses of one of its physicians. Dr. Simmer Belocha, regional coordinator for an anti-AIDS program in Northern Mindanao, has had to apologize publicly for “openly endorsing activities such as masturbation, sexual fantasies and thoughts?
The DOH is promoting “safe sex” activities that include among others, “masturbation, mutual masturbation, sexual fantasies and thoughts,” Belocha told reporters in Cagayan de Orro city (“Safe expert chided for ‘DOH’ it advice,” The Philippine Weekly, 2 June 1995).
In Mali “Songalos” are “responsible men”
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is basking with delight in the success of its social marketing program in Mali. ‘“Songalo” in a Mali TV spot, is the “exemplary” half of a pair of cartoon characters. Songalo follows the advice of a village elder to always be prepared for the dangers and the pleasures of the world. He always avoids the pitfalls on his journeys from his rural village to the big city. Among the indications of his wisdom is his use of “Protector” condoms to guard his wife from pregnancies and himself from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
USAID is the major donor in population and family planning services in Mali, “providing support for policy changes,” including “expanded access to contraceptives and clinical methods of family planning” (“Mali media campaign on target,” Frontline, USAID monthly magazine, 5).
UNFPA and the Philippine government in partnership
The United Nations Population Fund and the Philippine Government have recently signed a $26.5 million grant to assist the government’s population program.
The amount forms part of the $35 million package the UNFPA earlier committed to provide the Philippines over five years.
The agreement was signed by new UNFPA Country Director Satish Mehra, Philippine Socio-economic Planning Secretary Cielito F. Habito and Health Secretary Jaime Galvez-Tan.
The package supports the Medium-Term Philippine Population Program’s goal of achieving population levels consistent with “sustainable development” and “the country’s objectives of poverty alleviation, employment generation, equity and social justice promotion, environment protection, and advancement of women” (“RP, UNFPA ink $26.5 million population grant,” the Philippine Weekly, 2 June 1995).
Population crisis in Asia is aging populations
Many parts of Asia have populations that are aging faster than the populations of the West, according to journalist Maria Teresa V. Taningco. Writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal, Ms. Taningco points out that “China is aging faster than any other nation in the world.” Further, “in just a few decades [China] will find itself saddled with one of the world’s highest proportions of elderly.”
