October 1, 2003
Volume 5/ Number 29
Dear Colleague:
The UNFPA has lost another $25 million because of its continued support of China’s one-child policy. This year’s decision came on Sept. 30, the two-year anniversary of PRI’s undercover investigation of UNFPA’s county program in Sihui, Guangdong Province. On that day in 2001, investigator Josephine Guy courageously entered the Chinese Office of Family Planning and obtained photographs proving UNFPA complicity in China’s forced abortion policy. Later that day, Miss Guy interviewed women whose homes were destroyed because they became pregnant.
The 2003 money will be reprogrammed to life-saving basic health care, a move that pro-abortion lawmakers are expected to try and block. Stay tuned.
But for now, President Bush deserves our thanks. Please take a moment to write a letter of thanks to: President George W. Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500.
Steven W. Mosher
President
Secretary Powell Cuts $25 Million More from UNFPA
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cut another $25 million from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for 2003. Last year (2002), Secretary Powell determined that UNFPA was helping the government of Red China to carry out its population program of forced abortion more effectively, in violation of the Kemp-Kasten amendment which prohibits U.S. funds from going to groups that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
Powell’s determination followed three international investigations of UNFPA operations in China, all of which found evidence of coercion in UNFPA county programs. UNFPA continues to deny these charges, and to expand its support of China’s one-child policy.
The 2003 funding cut happened to fall on the same day that PRI investigators located the desk of the UN administrator of the UNFPA county program in Sihui in 2001. That desk, which PRI investigator Josephine Guy photographed, was in the same office as the Chinese officials who enforce the one-child policy in that UNFPA program. A short distance from that desk, in a county where UNFPA told Congress coercion had ended, Miss Guy obtained over two dozen testimonies from witnesses and victims who said that coercion was as bad today in this UNFPA program as ever in the history of the one-child policy. Miss Guy obtained taped statements from several people who were imprisoned, fined heavily and had their homes destroyed – about a mile from the Office of Family Planning – for attempting to hide the illegal
pregnancy of a victim of China’s one-child policy.
Like last year, the $25 million will be transferred into the Child Survival account at USAID, where it is hoped that it will be spent on basic life-saving aid like child rehydration, immunization and attended births. Unfortunately, House and Senate pro-abortion lawmakers (Rep. Kolbe and Sen. Leahy) may attempt to put a hold on the $25 million so USAID will not able to spend it on saving lives.
The real winners of this decision not to fund UNFPA for 2003 are the women of the world, who are emboldened by the U.S. decision to not fund groups that collaborate with coercive and inhumane population controllers.
