Saturday 14 February 2009

Don't be fooled: Obama and Clinton are funding forced abortions in China

In a horrifying report in today's Times, Chinese women are said to be angry about China's policy of forced abortion, compulsory sterilisation and infanticide

It's a tragic irony that, reportedly, Chinese women (and possibly The Times) are pinning their hopes on the Obama administration - and specifically on Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State who's visiting China this week - to stand up for human rights and speak up for women on this issue.

One of Barack Obama's first actions as President was to restore funding to UNFPA (and other organisations promoting abortion overseas), whose involvement in the forced abortion regime in China and elsewhere is all too well documented.

  • In 1979, the very year that China introduced its brutal one-child policy, UNFPA signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the Chinese government.
  • In 1983, the year commonly regarded as the worst year for coercion, UNFPA gave one of its first two Population Awards to the minister-in-charge of China’s State Family Planning Commission. (The other award that year was given to Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, whose government enforced compulsory birth control including sterilisation.)
  • In 1985, Rafael Salas, UNFPA’s then executive director, told Premier Zhao Ziyang that "China should feel proud of the achievements made in her family planning program." (reported by The People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper).
  • In 1991, UNFPA's then executive director Nafis Sadik said: "China has every reason to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy and control of its population growth.” (Xinhua, 11 April 1991) In 2002 China's State Family Planning Commission gave Nafis Sadik its own Population Award.
  • In 1999, UNFPA aided and abetted "ethnic cleansing" by indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic by assisting his regime's plan "to limit or forbid the enormous increase of the birthrate in Kosovo".
  • In 2001, Thoraya Obaid, the new UNFPA executive director, said that over the past 20 years, China had seen notable achievements made in population control by implementing the family planning policy.
  • In 2001, research by the (pro-life) Population Research Institute (PRI) found that UNFPA was complicit in population control against Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
  • In 2003, UNFPA exploited the aftermath of the war in Iraq to launch a campaign to provide "reproductive health" to Iraqi refugees. ("Reproductive health" is a euphemism which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined as including abortion on demand.

In The Times report about Chinese women's growing anger we read:

" ' ... Six days before the due date, 10 strong strangers came to my house, forced me into a truck then took me to a family planning clinic, where the doctor gave me an injection,' she said.

"'The child began struggling in my womb and one of these scum even kicked me in the abdomen. Then the baby came out and they threw it into a rubbish bin. I could even see it was still moving ... '"

The Times report continues:

" ... Clinton annoyed the Chinese regime with a speech at a 1995 women's conference in Beijing in which she said: 'It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have an abortion or sterilised against their will.'

"Now Clinton is predicted to tackle Beijing on a broader range of issues than the economics-focused approach taken by the Bush administration. She has signalled that she will take a firmer stand on human rights ... "

Whatever Hillary Clinton's human rights rhetoric, the only way Chinese women can judge her real intentions is to see whether or not she disassociates herself from Barack Obama's policy spelled out clearly last month in these words: " … I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund ... "

So I say to the women of China and to The Times - Don't be fooled: As things stand, Obama and Clinton are funding the forced abortion regime in your country.