Chinese Communists Up to Their Old Tricks Enforcing the "One Boy Policy"

The communist thugs that seized control of the Chinese government in 1949 are on another of their periodic rampages that shame and discredit an ancient and proud people. Here is a report of a forced sterilization campaign from the Times of London. I'll try to get some corroboration on this story, so watch the updates. In the meantime assume that the actual truth is likely even worse than anything the Times would have the stomach to report (although this is horrifying).

"Family planning authorities have detained hundreds of people against their will in a campaign to sterilise 10,000 men and women suspected of trying to violate China’s strict birth control policies.

About 1,300 people were being held in cramped and poor conditions in offices throughout the small town of Puning in southern Guangdong Province and are forced to listen to “lectures” on state rules limiting the size of families, the Nanfang Countryside Daily said.

In the years after China launched its strict “one couple, one child” family planning policy in the late 1970s, abuses such as forced later-term abortions, sterilisations and even the killing of newborn babies were widely reported.

But such practices have fallen sharply in recent years as the policy has become quite widely accepted and exceptions have been introduced.

However, officials in Puning launched a 20-day campaign on April 7 since so many couples have left the area in search of factory jobs and have found it easier to have children outside the government-set quotas.

The county intends to sterilise 9,559 women or their husbands who are suspected of planning to have a second or third child. So far about half that number have agreed to comply, the newspaper said.

Officials have detained the elderly parents of those who do not submit voluntarily to the surgery or who try to evade the authorities to force them to comply, the newspaper said. It reported that on April 10 some 100 people, mostly elderly, were seen inside a damp 200 square metre building at a township family planning centre.

Read it all here.

Later in the article, a Chinese official of the Puning Population and Family Planning Bureau is quoted as saying blandly: "“It’s not uncommon for family planning authorities to adopt some tough tactics.” To which, one can only reply: "In civilized countries it is!"

I wonder if Thomas Friedman would call this one of the "drawbacks" or one of the "advantages" of the "one party autocracy led by enlightened people in China," as he puts it.