Communist China's Evil Ways

[Guest guest]

Chinese kill baby to enforce birth

rule

Times Newspapers Ltd.

http://www.the-

times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/08/24/timfgnfar01001.html#links

FROM OLIVER AUGUST IN BEIJING

 

CHINA has been

shaken by one of the

most horrifying cases of

official infanticide in

recent memory after

family planners drowned

a healthy baby in front of

its parents.

 

The actions of the

officials in the village of Caidian, in the central Hubei

province - carried out as part of China's one-child policy -

caused a public outcry which forced the Hubei

government to pledge that those responsible would be

punished, a rarity in such cases.

 

The baby's mother, identified by Chinese newspapers as

Mrs Liu, was expecting her fourth child. Couples in the

countryside, where 70 per cent of China's people live,

often have more than one child without punishment,

despite the policy. But in Mrs Liu's case she was forcibly

injected with a saline solution to induce labour and kill the

child.

 

However, the baby was born healthy, to the surprise of

family planning officials who had ordered the injection,

which ordinarily destroys the infant's nervous system.

 

Immediately after the birth, they ordered the father to kill

the child outside the hospital. He refused to obey but was

so scared of further punishment that he left the crying baby

behind in an office building, where it was found by a

doctor shortly afterwards.

 

The doctor took the baby back to the hospital and

reunited it with its mother. He removed the umbilical cord,

administered vaccinations and then sent the family home.

 

Five officials were waiting for them in their living room.

During the ensuing argument, the officials grabbed the

baby, dragged it out of the house and drowned it in a

paddy field in front of its parents.

 

Such was the public outcry in Hubei that people in

Caidian contacted newspapers in the nearby metropolis of

Wuhan on the Yangtze River. This led to national media

attention which forced the Hubei government to pledge

that it would punish the guilty officials.

 

Since its implementation in the early 1970s, the one-child

policy has been dogged by allegations that family planning

officials force those who break the rules into having

abortions. The policy was introduced to ensure that

China, a land historically beset by flood and famine, could

feed all its people - now exceeding 1.1 billion - from a

mere 7 per cent of the world's arable land.

 

Last month Zhang Weiqing, Beijing's Family Planning

Minister, said he would not tolerate officials abusing

women in order to achieve birth control targets. He said:

"We have a strict policy. We deal with every violation by

officials seriously." He was responding to media reports

that in Nanhai, Guangdong, family planning officials held

pregnant women in detention centres for violating the

one-child policy.

 

The Government has recently restated its full commitment

to the policy despite the abuses.The official Xinhua news

agency commented: "Without taking effective measures to

slow down the rapid growth of its population, China

would have 300 million people more than the current

figure."

 

A foreign demography expert said: "There are reports of

people who have more than one child being beaten up,

ostracised by the community and their houses demolished,

but it is not condoned by the central government."

 

The doctor who tended the baby in Caidian said: "How

could they be so cruel? The child could have been looked

after in a children's welfare home. How could they do it?"