Memorandum submitted by The Society for
the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)
1. The Society for the Protection of Unborn
Children (SPUC) www.spuc.org.uk is a lobbying and educational
membership organisation, founded in London in 1967 to defend human
life from conception to natural death. SPUC has been invited by
parliamentary committees to submit evidence on a range of topics.
2. SPUC has been concerned about the violation
of human rights abuses by China's population control programme,
the "one-child policy" (OCP), since the policy's inception
over a generation ago.
3. During the last two inquiries into the
FCO Human Rights Annual Reports, the FAC has not only responded
to SPUC's concerns but obtained results from the FCO in relation
to the one-child policy. SPUC is extremely grateful to the FAC
for the integrity it has demonstrated through its active sensitivity
to our concerns.
4. In its February 2002 Report, the FAC
said:
In the [FCO's 2001 HR] Report the Government
sets out 10 objectives of a high-level critical dialogue on human
rights issues between China and the United Kingdom and its EU
partners, objectives with which we agree. There is, however, one
omission. We suggest that the human rights abuses which have occurred
as a result of China's population control programme [footnote
to SPUC submission]"coercive fertility control",
as described by the Secretary of State for International Development
[footnote to HC Debate, 7 November 2001, Col. 285],should
also appear as a matter to be addressed in this list of objectives,
and should be mentioned in future Human Rights Annual Reports.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmfaff/589/58904.htm#a12
SECTION ON
THE ONE-CHILD
POLICY IN
THE FCO'S
2003 HUMAN RIGHTS
(HR) REPORT (P230)
5. In its March 2003 Report on the FCO's
2003 HR Report, the FAC:
recommend[ed] that the FCO give serious consideration
to a fundamental re-evaluation of its work with China on the issue
of human rights, given that the current strategy appears to be
yielding few tangible results. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/257/25702.htm
6. In brief, the section on China's one-child
policy in the FCO's 2003 HR Report bears neither evidence that
the FCO has "give[n] serious consideration to a fundamental
re-evaluation of its work with China on the issue of human rights"
nor any results, at least on the issue of the one-child policy.
7. In its response to the FAC's March 2003
Report, the FCO explicitly rejected a suggestion by the FAC's
February 2002 Report thus:
[T]he [FAC's February 2003] report noted that
the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children had stressed
"the continuing human rights abuses resulting from the often
brutal enforcement of China's one child policy, which had been
understated in the Report. The FAC last year [2002] called for
the one child policy to be included as a subject raised at the
Human Rights Dialogue. We have considered this at length and have
concluded that the Dialogue is not the best forum in which to
raise this. The Dialogue already covers a wide range of issues.
DFID takes the lead within Her Majesty's Government for funding
UN family planning projects, and they have established contact
with the Chinese State Family Planning Ministry. We have made
clear to the Chinese that family planning policies should be based
on free and informed parental choice and not on coercion. http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/FCOAnnualreportHumanRightsCm5820.pdf
8. The human rights records of foreign governments
falls squarely within the FCO's remit. It is not acceptable that
they should "pass the buck" to DFIDwhich is actively
supporting the policy behind the abuses. Although the FCO 2003
HR Report claims that:
The UK Government ... has made it clear we feel
[China's family planning policies] should be based on the principles
of the International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD): that is, on consent, not coercion. P230, http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
it also admits that:
DfID's bilateral programme has not had a specific
objective or programme of activities on the promotion of ICPD.
P230, http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
9. Furthermore, although DFID claims that:
All UK Government assistance for sexual and reproductive
health is contingent on respect for the human rights principles
and standards of privacy and free and informed choice upheld at
the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development
(Clare Short, House of Commons, 27 July 1999 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmhansrd/vo990727/text/90727w21.htm£90727w21.htm_spnew1)
DfID has refused point-blank even to take account
of the one-child policy's human rights violations when deciding
on its bilateral aid to China:
I do not agree that the [International Development]
Bill should include a requirement for the Secretary of State to
take account of a government's human rights record in determining
the nature and scale of assistance for its people. (DfID Minister
Baroness Amos, House of Lords, 16 July 2001) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200102/ldhansrd/vo010716/text/10716-06.htm)
10. When a cross-party coalition of peers
attempt to amend the International Development Bill to prevent
taxpayers' funds being used for coercive population control, the
government imposed what was rumoured to be a three-line whip against
the amendment. http://www.spuc.org.uk/releases/20011025.htm
11. DfID in turn shifts responsibility over
the issue of the one-child policy to the United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation
(IPPF). However, as detailed in later of our submission, UNFPA
and IPPF are complicit in China's coercive population control
programme.
12. In a February 2000 letter to former
International Development Secretary Clare Short, Hong Kong-based
Sinologist Audrey Donnithorne, formerly Professorial Fellow and
Foundation Head of the Contemporary China Centre at the Australian
National University, wrote:
I am sorry if the British Government is so naíve
and ill-informed as to believe that the Chinese Government's population
control activities, which it is aiding, adhere to these [ICPD]
principles. Those of us who are nearer to the scene, and better
informed, realise that this is far from true. For example, friends
of mine in Mainland China are currently sheltering a woman, pregnant
with her second child, who knows all too well that she might be
coerced into having an abortion if she was discovered by the government
authorities. In view of coercion of this type, which is known
to be widespread at the present time, the British government should
cease forthwith to give financial assistance to population control
activities carried on by the Chinese Government.
"The UK Government has never questioned
China's right or need to implement family planning policies but
has made it clear we feel they should be based on the principles
of the International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD): that is, on consent, not coercion." p 230, FCO 2003
HR Report http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
13. China's right and need to implement
its national population control policy should be questioned. The
legality of the establishment of the one-child policy is questionable:
Award-winning author on China and former Beijing
bureau chief for the South China Morning Post, Jasper Becker,
has written:
"The [one-child] policy was hurriedly conceived
in 1979 by a handful of men without research or consultation and
in the absence of current population statistics ... Deng Xiaoping
personally approved the policy before it could tested or studied
by social scientists or any other experts. Although a key plank
of China's reforms, it was never debated, enshrined in any law
or approved by the National People's Congress, nor did it draw
on any powers listed in the Constitution....The huge raft of implementing
regulations, the harsh punishments meted out to those who disregard
them and the 80,000 full-time family planning workers who enforce
them were brought into being by Party diktat." (Jasper Becker,
The Chinese, John Murray, London, 2000, P370-71).
(Ed At face value, the figure of 80,000 full-time
family planning workers seems to contradict the figure of 300,000
such workers claimed previously in the same book and quoted in
paragraph 22 of this submission. However, SPUC has been advised
by experts that the available figures of numbers of family planning
workers in China are very unreliable. What is indisputable, however,
is Mr Becker's claim that the one-child policy is executed by
a "vast and coercive machinery", cf para 22.)
14. Dr John S Aird, former senior China
specialist at the US Bureau of the Census, is regarded as one
of the world's leading experts on the one-child policy. Dr Aird
has kindly given SPUC permission to present the FAC with his comments
on the section on the one-child policy in the FCO's 2003 HR Report:
The authors of the report seem to be unaware
that the notion that population pressure adversely affects human
welfare has never been empirically demonstrated. The relevant
statistical evidence from international experience since the 1960s
has been equivocal. Therefore the "need" for a national
population control policy is questionable. The Chinese leadership
have accepted the idea as a matter of great certainty once Mao
finally changed his mind about the economic advantages of a large
and growing populationa notion that also remains unproven
and doubtful.
As for "making it clear" that China
should base its family planning programme on ICPD principles,
the Chinese have never followed those principles and their violation
of them is a continuing international outrage. The gentle, almost
listless, remonstrances periodically put forth by foreign governments,
the UNFPA, and the IPPF have never conveyed enough conviction
and concern to have any appreciable deterrent effect on the Chinese
programme. Their continuing support of the Chinese programme has
always sent the message that they really do not take seriously
violations of human rights that advance the cause of population
control. That is how the Chinese government reads the message,
and their reading of it is apparently correct.
15. According to a report by Chinese state
news agency Xinhua, China has recently renewed its commitment
to birth quotas for at least the next 20 years. ("PRC Law
on Population and Family Planning", 29 December 2001).
16. Furthermore, language such as "we
feel they should" is so weak that it strongly implies that
the FCO believes that adherence to the ICPD principles is merely
a suggestion of something optional at the discretion of the Chinese
regime. Such weak language represents a failure to implement recommendation
28 of the FAC's November 2000 Report on China:
We welcomeand endorsethe strong
language which the Government uses to condemn human rights abuses
in China, and we recommend that it continue to do so in all appropriate
circumstances. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/574/57414.htm
"We have been concerned about reports of
human rights abuses associated with the family planning policy,
for example enforced sterilisations and abortions, and the selective
abortion of female foetuses or abandonment of baby girls."
(p 230, FCO 2003 HR Report) http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
17. In contrast to this low key approach,
leading feminist academic Wendy McElroy has described the situation
as:
arguably the greatest bioethical atrocity on
the globe (Fox News Views, 24 September 2002) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,63892,00.html
18. Again, such weak language on the part
of the FCO represents a failure to implement recommendation 28
of the FAC's November 2000 Report on China
We welcomeand endorsethe strong
language which the Government uses to condemn human rights abuses
in China, and we recommend that it continue to do so in all appropriate
circumstances.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/574/57414.htm
19. It must be noted that the reports of
human rights violations referred to have been scrutinised and
endorsed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US
State Department et al. In its November 2000 Report on
China, the FAC said:
[W]e believe that it is highly likely that
very many more cases of abuse have occurred and are occurring
than ever come to the attention of outside observers of China.
As Dr Jane Duckett of Glasgow University put it, "commonly
reported human rights issues are only the tip of the iceberg.
Because there is no guarantee of free and fair trial, there are
many more miscarriages of justice, often affecting the poorest
and weakest in society.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/574/57407.htm£a23
20. The phrase FCO uses: "abuses associated
with the family planning policy" suggests, misleadingly,
that these "abuses" such as enforced abortions are really
side-effects of the policy, or even only happen when the one-child
policy has not been implemented fully! For example, Zhang Weiqing,
director of the State Family Planning Commission, claimed in December
2000 that a recent case of infanticide by family planning workers
was "an isolated incident" and declared that:
We've always been opposed to coercion in
these cases and we are extremely opposed to induced abortion.
("China admits mistakes in enforcing
one-child policy", AFP/The Taipei Times, 20 December 2000)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2000/12/20/66234
21. Amnesty International has rebutted this
claim:
Birth control has been compulsory in China
since 1979 and the official line that "coercion" is
not permitted is flatly contradicted by the facts. ("Human
rights in China: the attacks on fundamental rights continue",
T. Kumar, Advocacy Director for Asia & Pacific, Amnesty International
USA, 11 February 1999)
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2003/KumarTestimony030911.pdf
22. Coercion and induced abortion is and
has always been at the one-child policy's heart:
[A]lthough state spending on rural healthcare
has declined sharply over the last two decades, the family planning
service, with 300,000 full-time workers and 80 million volunteers,
has been relatively well-funded. The vast and coercive machinery
was responsible for 8.7 million abortions in 1981, 12.4 million
in the following year and 14.4 million in 1983. That year there
were also 18 million insertions of uterine devices and 21 million
sterilizations . . . In the much tougher climate after 1989, the
state launched another big drive in which 10 million people were
sterilized in one year . . . In the early 1990s rural cadres were
executed for having accepted money to issue a birth certificate
for a second or subsequent child. (Jasper Becker, The Chinese,
John Murray, London, 2000, P236)
23. In 1979 Chinese Vice-Premier Chen Muhua
described the one-child policy as
A policy of encouragement and punishment
for maternity, with encouragement as the main feature, will be
implemented. Parents having one child will be encouraged, and
strict measures will be enforced to control the birth of two or
more babies. Everything should be done to insure that the natural
population growth rate in China falls to zero by 2000. (Quoted
by Dr John Aird, Congressional-Executive Commission on China)
http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/092302/aird.php
The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, regarded
as the father of the one-child policy, said in 1987:
In order to reduce the population, use whatever
means you must, but do it!
(China Spring Digest, New York).
Peng Peiyun, the then minister-in-charge of
the State Family Planning Commission, said in 1991 that
Couples all have a duty to practise family
planning. This is stipulated in our constitution (interview, Agence
France Press).
(It is perhaps significant that in the new Chinese
Constitution of 1982, an additional article on family planning
was added stipulating, as Peng Peiyun correctly states, that "Both
husband and wife have the duty to practise family planning".
[article 49]
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html
The 1992 Law of the People's Republic of China
on the Protection of Women's Rights and the Interests of Women
says:
when a wife terminates gestation as required
by the family planning programme, her husband may not apply for
a divorce within six months after the operation. (article 42)
(Ed. These two quotations seem to contradict
Jasper Becker's statement above that the one-child policy was
never "enshrined in any law" nor "did it draw on
any powers listed in the Constitution". However, Becker seems
to be referring specifically to the one-child aspect of China's
population control policy, to the policy as a whole and to the
absence of specific powers in the Constitution enforcing the one-child
aspect of the policy; as distinct from disparate references to
the provisions of the policy which, as Dr Aird explains later
(see below), are to be found in a wide range of official government
documents which nonetheless have the force of law.)
24. The official national family planning
journal China Population stated in June 1993:
So far the reduction in the PRC's rural
fertility rate has been the result of external restraints: that
is the mechanism involved has been a coercion-based reduction
mechanism.
A 1994 article in China's leading demographic
journal Demographic Research stated:
It cannot be denied that population control
in China is a control model guided by administrative coercion.
Associated Press reported in 1997:
"It would be better to have blood flow
like a river than to increase the population by one", reads
one rural slogan, according to a report by the Chinese newspaper
International Trade News. (Renee Schoof, "No 1 Difficulty",
AP, 5 July 1997)
An editorial in the official People's Daily
newspaper in September 2000 insisted that
We cannot just be content with the current
success, we must make population control a permanent policy.
The FAC, in its November 2000 report on China,
insisted on
one fundamental fact: that, from all the
evidence gathered, China remains now one of a minority of the
world's nations which institutionalises abuse of human rights
[SPUC emphasis]
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/574/57414.htm
25. The "abuses" cited in the
FCO 2003 HR Report omit some other equally serious human rights
violations under the one-child policy such as infanticide, arbitrary
detention and physical abuse of pregnant women and their families,
and the oppression of ethnic minorities:
What is the UK doing helping to fund birth
control policies in Tibet, an occupied country? With Tibetans
a rapidly shrinking minority in their own land, rigid birth controlespecially
in conjunction with China's inhumane policies of enforced sterilisation
and abortionamounts to genocide. How is it possible that
the UK can support a system where Han Chinese in Tibet are allowed
more children than Tibetans? It's time the UK government behaved
ethically. (Tibet Vigil press release, 24 August 2000)
http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2000/8/257.html
26. The FCO Report has also omitted to mention
(unlike Amnesty International) the use of torture under the one-child
policy:
[Zhou Jiangxiong, a] 30-year-old farmer
from Hunan province was tortured to death [by officials from a
township birth control office in May 1998] because the officials
were trying to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected
of being pregnant without permission. ("China: Extensive
use of torturefrom police to tax collectors to birth control
officials", Amnesty International Index ASA 17/003/2001,
12 February 2001)
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/ASA170032001?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES%5CCHINA
27. Yet another omission is the recent phenomenon
of child trafficking:China's one-child policy has fuelled trafficking
in children, experts have said, as many families are unable to
have a son or wanting a second child opt to buy one.http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afpasiapacific/view/67125/1/.html
"In May 2002 the Chinese minister for
state family planning told the UK Government that rights abuses
did still occur, particularly in remote and poor regions."
(P.230, FCO 2003 HR Report)
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
28. Dr Aird's response is:
Of course he did. That has been the official
Chinese cover story on the coercion question for the past two
decades and more. It is also a lie. Chinese policy up to the present
time still holds local officials responsible for meeting their
family planning targets and punishes them if they fail. On 30
April 2003, Fujian Province dismissed four local officials from
their posts for failing to pursue family planning effectively,
and the action was announced in the provincial Party newspaper,
obviously as a warning to other local leaders to take their duties
seriously. On 6 June 2003, the Qinghai provincial Party newspaper
reported on a standing committee meeting at which family planning
officials were told that they should "ensure that actual
results will be achieved" in family planning work and added
that:
" . . . Departments concerned should
scientifically set the targets for assessment of the family planning
work. The targets should not be set too low, since this will not
impose pressure on cadres and will not produce results in work.
However, the targets should not be set too high either, because
this is liable to produce a false phenomenon."
In March 2003 China's new president and Party
Chairman, Hu Jintao, told a national forum on population, resources,
and environmental work that these efforts still face "certain
severe challenges and significant problems which urgently require
solution." He said that "all the comrades of the Party
must place great emphasis on this. They must resolutely overcome
sentiments such as blind optimism, slackness and inactivity, negativity,
and fear of difficulty . . . They must continue to keep a tight
grasp on population, resources, and environmental work."
Later that same month, in his annual government
work report for the previous year, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji
said, "We established and improved the target responsibility
system for population and family planning and implemented this
basic state policy in real earnest."
From these indicators (and there are others)
it is clear that the central authorities do not intend to relax
the pressures on local officials to attain their assigned goals
in family planning work (now merged with resource and environment
concerns to lend it greater urgency). It is these pressures that
lead to coercion at the local level, and as long as local officials
are held personally responsible for attainment of family planning
targets and punished when they fail, the coercion will continue.
The so-called "target management responsibility system"
is still in force, and foreign evaluations of the programme that
ignore this aspect of the programme, continue to make excuses
for the Chinese programme, and repeat disingenuous Chinese government
propaganda about it, in effect condone the coercion.
"There are now fewer reports of
coerced abortions and positive signs that the medical and family
planning staff are focussing less on enforcing the policy and
more on providing family planning support." (P230, FCO
2003 HR Report)
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
29. Yet these indicators may be creating
a false impression, as Dr Aird explains:
After several reports of beatings and killings
of family planning violators got into the international media
in 1998-2001 and embarrassed the Chinese government, there was
an attempt in the spring of 2002 to suppress some of the more
extreme forms of coercion or at least keep them out of Chinese
newspapers, from which foreign reporters picked them up. But that
anti-coercion effort was brief (like several earlier such efforts)
and seems to have ended more than a year ago. The overall incidence
of coercion in the programme cannot be quantified with any accuracy.
Despite the published figures, nothing can be said with confidence
about whether the numbers of forced abortions, sterilizations,
IUD insertions, and implants is actually rising or falling. Forced
abortions apparently tend to decrease during a tightening of control,
presumably because fewer couples will risk an unauthorized pregnancy
if they think it is unlikely they can carry it to term without
being caught by the authorities. A decline in the numbers of such
reports may simply mean a tightening of media control to suppress
the news or more successful intimidation of couples of childbearing
age. In both cases coercion is rising and reproductive freedom
is being further curtailed, while the gross indicators of it are
becoming less conspicuous.
Actually, the liberal media have for years (ever
since the 1983 crash programme of compulsory birth control surgeries
[eg abortions, sterilisations etc] been saying that the number
of such operations has declined, simply because subsequent peaks
never quite equalled those of 1983. The result is that the more
recent escalations in human rights violations under the Chinese
programme have been masked by the mistaken presumption of a steady
downward trend in coercive incidents. Chinese government spokespersons,
including officials of the State Family Planning Commission, have
often made similar assertions, which foreign journalists and foreign
government officials supportive of the UNFPA and the family planning
movement have rushed to embrace.
30. For example, Shanghai, China's richest
city, is often held up as an example of how contemporary China
is being "Westernised". Yet still in Shanghai:
[M]ost couples in the city are only allowed to
have one child....Anyone who deliberately gives false information
while applying to have a second child will be seriously punished,
said Xie Lingli, director of the population commission. He said
punishments still haven't been worked out, but will likely involve
a fine, and the city could pass on information to local credit
rating services, making it tough for the offenders to get a bank
loan.... Couples who break the law will still be required to pay
a fine, or "social fostering fee," as the government
calls it. The fee is based on the couple's annual income.
http://english.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper1/1153/class000100022/hwz178377.htm
"China's one child policy was only given
a legislative basis in September 2002... The new law represents
an important step forward and enshrines the rights and responsibilities
of the government and citizens in reproductive health..."
(p.230, FCO 2003 HR Report) http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
31. This claim is totally false.
As US Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in
July 2002:
http://www.house.gov/maloney/issues/UNFPA/unfpadecision.pdf
"This law reflects and reinforces the strict
rules in the PRC that lead to coercion, including the "social
compensation fees" and disciplinary measures on couples who
violate the state-prescribed number of children. The law, which
will become effective on September 1, 2002, includes population
control quotas (Article 11) and fines ("premiums") for
violating the one-child law (Article 41 (bringing children into
society) ).
Article 17 states that
"Citizens . . . are also duty-bound undergo
family planning as provided for in the law."
and Article 18 defines that the law's true purpose
is
"uphold a single-child policy for married
couples" .
Note that unmarried people are not permitted
to have children.
32. A US State Department delegation to
China in May 2002 stated that:
[O]ur team looks upon [social compensation fees]
as a coercive element that will shortly have a new legal basis
when the Law on Population and Birth Planning goes into effect
on September 1, 2002. ("Second Finding: Coercive Elements
in Practice and Law," US State Department Delegation to China,
29 May 2002).
33. In brief, the new law violates the ICPD
principles that "[a]ll couples and individuals have the right
to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their
children."
34. In an article in the official People's
Daily newspaper entitled "No Relaxation of Chinese `One
Couple, One Child' Policy: Official", family planning minister
Zhao Bingli warned that
from the date that the law took effect, those
who have an extra-policy birth must face the music.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200209/01/eng20020901102440.shtml
Another article in the People's Daily
entitled "China Clears Way to Enforce First Family Planning
Law" reports that
[B]illboards in villages and urban communities
were being used to inform people about the law. There is even
a brochure published by the China Population Publishing House
which uses cartoons to warn people not to break the law....Peng
Peiyun, vice-chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the National
People's Congress, said: "To set the implementation date
eight months later than its enactment ensures there is enough
time to prepare and to have every Chinese knowing the law and
observing it.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200208/03/eng20020803100838.shtml
The South China Morning Post reported
that
The legislation basically incorporates current
policy and practice. ... Analysts say China is unlikely to see
a major departure [from] or relaxation of the coercive one-child
policy. ... ...The legislation has failed to prescribe detailed
prohibitions against the well-documented abuses that have been
perpetrated in the name of the policy, analysts said. (Clara Li,
South China Morning Post, 5 January 2002)
The BBC reported that
The legislation stipulates, among other things,
that urban couples should generally have only one child. Violators
face fines. Local authorities will be responsible for making sure
the law is observed. The Chinese government maintains that the
law neither relaxes nor tightens the current policy, but seeks
to stabilize it. Zhang Weiqing, director of the State Family Planning
Commission, told the press that as the country's population continued
to grow by an average of 10 million annually, the law would be
maintained as a long-term basic national policy. ("Concern
at Chinese family planning law", 9 January 2002)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/mediareports/1751680.stm
35. As Dr Aird comments, for the FCO to
say that "the new law represents an important step forward"
is a rather silly thing to say. Government policies in China,
official "circulars" and directives, and exhortations
by Party leaders, all have the force of law, whether or not they
are incorporated into actual legislation at the national or provincial
level. As for the Population and Family Planning Law that officially
took effect from 1 September 2002, which is referred to in the
quoted sentence, nobody knows exactly what it authorizes or prohibits
yetnot even people in China. On 20 August 2003, a Chinese
internet newspaper in English issued from Beijing noted that one
of the duties of the newly empowered State Population and Family
Planning Commission, which replaced the old SFPC as of March 2003,
will be to "work out detailed rules for implementing existing
laws and regulations, which currently provide only general guidelines."
The practical implications of the 2002 law and the 2003 reorganization
of the SFPC remain to be seen, but from recent comments by the
Chinese leadership, the intent was NOT to weaken family planning
enforcement or dilute the efforts at population control but to
reinforce control. Any notion that the vague assurances in the
law about carrying out family planning in a "civilized manner"
or respecting the "legitimate rights" of citizens will
mean greater recognition of human rights in family planning is
mere wishful thinking. That was never the main purpose of the
20-year effort to come up with a national family planning law.
36. It is clear that the FCO has been misled
about the new law, which makes no significant change in the one-child
policy.
"Although the potential for conflict
between reproductive choice and direct use of financial incentives
still exists, the separation between the collection and use of
revenues generated through the system may reduce the incentives
for official abuse." (P230, FCO 2003 HR Report)
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html
37. Dr Aird comments that
This statement lacks forthrightness. It is even
vaguer than the law itself. In Article 41 the 2002 law clearly
provides for the imposition of financial penalties on couples
who have children without permission, which it euphemizes as the
payment of "premiums" into a "fund set up for bringing
children into society." Ostensibly a reimbursement to the
state for the costs of rearing the unauthorized children, these
penalties are clearly meant as fines to deter unauthorized childbearing.
To call them "incentives" is dishonest. They are, in
fact, ways to deny reproductive choice to the people of China.
Other ways, such as mandatory abortions, sterilizations, and the
rest are hidden in obscure language in the lawin the affirmation
that citizens are "duty-bound to [practice] family planning"
in Article 17 and that "husbands and wives of childbearing
age shall ... accept... family planning technical services"
(ie birth control surgeries) in Article 20. The long shadow of
the 1983 surgery drive still looms over the people of China!
"The Department for International Development
(DFID) supports and monitors UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the
International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) programmes
in China. These programmes seek to encourage China towards full
acceptance of the ICPD principles. The focus of UNFPA support
is to improve the quality of medical care and increasing equity
of access to family planning services." (P230, FCO 2003 HR
Report)
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/chapter09.html)
38. Yet, as the US State Department concluded
in July 2002,
UNFPA's support of, and involvement in, China's
population planning activities allows the Chinese government to
implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion.
and therefore
is supporting or participating in the management
of a "program of coercive abortion."
39. As the State Department explains,
UNFPA provides millions of dollars in financial
support for PRC family-planning activities in the 32 counties
in which it operates. These outlays include expenditures for equipment
such as computers and data-processing equipment designed to strengthen
management capacity at the county level, surgical and other medical
equipment and project vehicles. Although such equipment has legitimate
uses, it also facilitates the imposition of social compensation
fees and the performance of abortions on those women who are coerced
by the social compensation fees to undergo abortions that they
would otherwise not undergo. For example, recent testimony of
a former planned-birth officer makes clear that something as seemingly
innocuous as data-processing equipment is used to establish a
database record of all women of child-bearing age in an area and
to trigger the issuance of "birth-not-allowed" notices
and the imposition of social compensation fees. Not only has UNFPA
failed to ensure that its support does not facilitate these practices;
it also has failed to deploy the resources necessary even to monitor
this issue. In the context of the PRC, supplying equipment to
the very agencies that employ coercive practices amounts to support
or participation in the management of the program.
UNFPA participates in other ways in the management
of the relevant PRC county field offices that propagate the government's
distinction between legal births and out-of-plan births. It takes
credit for posted documents that note that it is forbidden "to
prevent legal births"thus bearing partial responsibility
for disseminating a message that it is not forbidden for government
employees to prevent out-of-plan births. More generally, UNFPA
is helping improve the administration of the local family planning
offices that are administering the very social compensation fees
and other penalties that are effectively coercing women to have
abortions.
(Analysis of Determination that Kemp-Kasten Amendment
Precludes Further Funding to UNFPA under Pub. L. 107-115, 18 July
2002)
http://www.state.gov/g/prm/rls/other/12128.htm
40. In 1985, the Governing Council of UNFPA
declared that "... it is the policy of the Fund, in accordance
with its own family planning guidelines...not to provide assistance
for abortions, abortion services or abortion-related equipment
and supplies as a method of family planning." http://www.unfpa.org/exbrd/decisions/8519.htm
The State Department's findings indicate that UNFPA's collaboration
with China's population programme constitutes a violation of its
own policy.
41. A delegation of British MPs to China
in April 2002 found that in UNFPA programme countries:
"citizens still have to pay a social compensation
payment if they have more than one or two children",
which is:
set at a level which most families would find
extremely difficult to pay. It therefore acts as a pretty powerful
incentive to conform. This is a form of coercion. (China Mission
Report by Christine McCafferty, Edward Leigh and Norman Lamb,
2 July 2002 http://www.appg-popdevrh.org.uk/china/China_MPs_report.pdf).
In fact, such fines may be as high as seven
to eight times a couple's annual salary.
42. These findings led the US administration
to cut off funding for UNFPA, on the grounds that US federal funding
for UNFPA would be illegal under US law which prohibits the funding
of any organisation which "supports or participates in the
management of a program of coercive abortion". 2002 was not
the first time that UNFPA has been deemed ineligible for funding
because of its complicity in the one-child policy. In 1985, the
US Agency for International Development (USAID) declared that
"the kind and quality of assistance provided by UNFPA contributed
significantly to China's ability to manage and implement a population
program in which coercion was pervasive." All US federal
funding for UNFPA was deemed illegal by the US administration
between 1985 and 1992. Between 1993 and 1995, and again in 1998,
general funding of UNFPA was allowed but only subject to a condition
that US funds would be maintained in a segregated account, none
of which could be used in China. In 2000 and 2001, general funding
for UNFPA was again allowed but this time on the condition that
the amount that UNFPA spent in China would be deducted from the
total amount. As explained above, in 2002 UNFPA was deemed ineligible
for any funding under the same law which was applied between 1985
and 1992. (http://www.house.gov/maloney/issues/UNFPA/unfpadecision.pdf)
UNFPA's supporters have been lobbying to alter or remove this
law in order to secure US federal funding for UNFPA.
43. IPPF also supports and (through its
affiliate association, the China Family Planning Association)
participates in the management of China's programme of coercive
abortion. IPPF has even denied that the one-child policy is coercive.
Its representative, Laura Barclay, said that to
"accuse the Chinese government of enforcing
heinous practices officially at a national policy level"
was "a gross untruth". (Letter to the Catholic Herald,
London, 28 September 2001.)
44. Such a denial of the one-child policy
is unsurprising considering the organic relationship between IPPF
and the Chinese state. The body specifically responsible for ensuring
the policy's implementation at grassroots level, the China Family
Planning Association (CFPA), has been an IPPF member since 1983,
the year commonly regarded as the worst year for coercion. CFPA
is a state-run body: none of its top leaders have been ordinary
citizens unaffiliated with government or the Party. ("Orders
of the State: Responsibility and Collaboration in China's Population
Programme", Martin Moss and Jeffrey Bowe, Independent Tibet
Network UK, 2000, P34.) CFPA's function was made clear by the
dispatch announcing its founding (29 May 1980) issued by the state
news agency Xinhua:
The association will implement government population
control policies.
45. In a 1993 CFPA report distributed at
the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) at Cairo, CFPA has admitted that it has:
participated and supervised that the awarding
and punishing policies relating to family planning were properly
executed.
IPPF itself has admitted that CFPA volunteers
sometimes collect the occasional fine when a couple breaks the
birthplan rules (IPPF's "People" magazine, vol 16, no
1, 1989).
CFPA president Song Ping exhorted in 1992:
Raise the level of eugenics to a new height (Xinhua
news report, 20 November 1992).
CFPA has also received funding from UNFPA.
46. As long ago as 1995, the Overseas Development
Agency (now DfID) document China: Population Issues stated:
Critics of this position argue that several years
of UNFPA and IPPF involvement in China has not led the Chinese
to moderate their policies or stop abuses in the implementation
of policy. This is true.
47. This is unsurprising when one considers
that UNFPA signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with
the Chinese government in the very year that the one-child policy
was introduced (1979). In 1981, UNFPA executive director Rafael
Salas called the one-child policy "a superb example of integrating
population programs with the goals of national development."
In 1983, the year commonly regarded as the worst year for coercion,
UNFPA gave one of its first two United Nations Population Awards
to the Minister-in-Charge of the State Family Planning Commission.
("Popline", vol 5 no 9, October 1983, P4; also cited
by Dr John Aird, Congressional-Executive Commission on China,
http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/092302/aird.php) In 1984,
Rafael Salas stated that UNFPA had found no evidence of "abuses".
("Paying for abortion", The Wall Street Journal,
9 April 1984, p 34). In 1985, the People's Daily, the Communist
Party's official newspaper, reported that Salas told Premier Zhao
Ziyang that:
My colleagues and I come to visit at this time
to reaffirm our support of China in the field of population activities.
China should feel proud of the achievements made in her family
planning program.
48. In 1989 UNFPA's then executive director
Nafis Sadik denied that the one-child policy was coercive, declaring
it to be "totally voluntary" and claiming "there
is no such thing, as you know, [as] a license to have a birth
and so on." (American TV network CBS, 21 November 1989.)
In 1991, Nafis Sadik told the Chinese state
news agency Xinhua that
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
awarded Nafis Sadik with a Population Award (http://www.sfpc.gov.cn/EN/enews20020114-2.htm)
In 2001, in a report entitled "UNFPA Praises
China's Family Planning Policy," the People's Daily
said that new UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid praised that
over the past 20 years, China has seen notable achievements made
in population control by implementing the family planning policy.
49. UNFPA and IPPF claim to support the
ICPD Programme for Action, which demands that ". . .
in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning."
However, it is clear from the evidence of their collaboration
with the China's population programme that UNFPA and IPPF are
in violation of the ICPD principles.
50. At the very least, UNFPA and IPPF have
worked too closely with the Chinese regime over the past two decades
for anyone to have confidence that they can be relied upon to
exercise independent and effective leverage on the China regime
to eliminate coercion, which is the very nature of China's population
programme. As Dr Aird says:
How can they? Neither of these agencies has ever
been able to monitor effectively what the Chinese programme is
doing or to report on it honestly. Effective monitoring would
require independent observation at the grass-roots level. It is
not enough to ask questions of these agencies or of Chinese government
officials and report their answers. They are all bureaucracies
with an interest in putting a benign face on their undertakings.
What has the DfID donewhat CAN it doto get past
the self-serving reports of these agencies and find out what is
actually happening in the UNFPA and IPPF projects in China? The
first purpose of all such agencies is to continue and expand their
programmes and the administrative empires that depend on the programmes
for survival. Only good news will serve that purpose. But good
news and honest reporting don't always coincide! Is DfID in a
position to undertake an independent investigation of the projects
without officials from these agencies or from the Chinese government
looking over their shoulder and stage managing their enquiries?
51. The answer to Dr Aird's question is
almost certainly no, when one considers that UNFPA and IPPF have
a vested interest in retaining DfID's funding. DfID funding for
UNFPA and IPPF is mostly unrestricted and in turn UNFPA and IPPF
funding for SFPC and CFPA is also mostly unrestricted. DfID is
effectively allowing the Chinese regime to use British taxpayers'
funds for whatever it pleases, including coercion.
52. Furthermore, the FCO 2003 HR Report
claims that " [t]he focus of UNFPA support is to improve
the quality of medical care" is belied by UNFPA's own
data which shows that infant and maternal death rates have gone
up in several counties where UNFPA is operating. UNFPA data shows
that from 1999 to 2000, in 5 of the 32 UNFPA counties in China
where UNFPA is active (Longan, Wenchange, Zhenfeng, Pingba and
Xiangyun), total infant deaths increased from 777 to 812. (Source:
UNFPA, "Briefing Kit: US White House Mission," Infant
Mortality Situation for 32 Project Counties, 13-25 May, 2002.)
UNFPA data also shows that from 1999 to 2000, in 7 of the 32 UNFPA
counties in China (Xuanzhou, Guichi, Jianou, Dongming, Mengzhou,
Linwu and Sihui) total maternal deaths increased from 13 to 28.
(Source: UNFPA, "Briefing Kit: US White House Mission,"
Maternal Mortality Situation for 32 Project Counties, 13-25 May,
2002.)
53. In 1998 Oxfam and Save the Children
both withdrew their support for UNFPA's "Field manual for
reproductive health" for use in refugee camps. Oxfam and
Save the Children claimed that their concerns for minimal medical
standards had been "brushed aside" at several meetings
with UN bodies. ("The UN says it wants safe birth control
for refugeesbut risks killing the very women it aims to
help", Melanie Phillips, The Observer, London, 5 April
1998.)
Conclusion
54. Forced abortion was condemned as a crime
against humanity by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The FCO's
webpage on human rights starts by quoting a speech FCO minister
Bill Rammell in November last year, in which the Minister declares
that "There is no such thing any more as a quarrel in a faraway
country which is indifferent to our interests".
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=
Page&cid=1007029393564
Yet it is clear from the FCO's 2003 HR Report
that the issue of forced abortion in China has indeed been treated
as a matter in "a far-away country between people of whom
we know nothing". The FCO seems to have forgotten that forced
abortion was condemned as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg
War Crimes Tribunal.
55. In its November 2000 report on China,
the FAC
conclude[d] that the restrictions on reproductive
rights in China are not in keeping with Article 23 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], which give men
and women the right to found a family.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/574/57414.htm
As the FCO 2003 HR Report states (p.36),
There have been no signs of progress towards
ratifying the ICCPR.
( http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/Chapter01.html
)
The FCO 2003 HR Report (p.37) also states that
China stated at the UN Conference on Human Rights
in April 2003 that international concern over human rights in
China was "unimportant, meaningless and irrelevant".
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/Chapter01.html
56. In his foreword to the 2003 FCO HR Report,
Secretary of State Jack Straw wrote:
A concern for the victims of human rights abuses
lies at the heart of the Government's foreign policy. I am determined
that it should continue to do so....This report sets out how the
Government is advancing the cause of human rights across the globe....We
will continue to work with the international community to address
such injustices.
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Xcelerate/graphics/images/fcomain/hr/foreword.html
It is clear from the Report that Mr Straw is
not living up to his words in relation to the one-child policy.
RECOMMENDATIONS
57. SPUC recommends that the FAC:
criticises the FCO for rejecting
the FAC's suggestion in its February 2002 Report that the one-child
policy be included in the Human Rights Dialogue.
insists the FCO provides a full explanation
to the FAC of why it has decided not to include the one-child
policy in the HR Dialogue, in particular why the fact that "[t]he
Dialogue already covers a wide range of issues" precludes
the addition of "arguably the greatest bioethical atrocity
on the globe" (Wendy McElroy, Fox News Views, 24 September
2002).
criticises the FCO for attempting
to shift responsibility for the issue of the one-child policy
to DfID.
criticises the FCO for placing its
trust in UNFPA and IPPF to make progress against coercion.
criticises the FCO for failing to
implement recommendation 28 of the FAC's November 2000 Report
on China by not using strong language to condemn the one-child
policy.
recommends that the FCO to use stronger
language than that in the FCO 2003 HR Report to condemn the one-child
policy.
recommends, in line with recommendation
31 of the FAC's November 2000 Report on China, that the FCO "toughen
its stance in response to the deterioration in human rights standards
which have occurred in China", specifically on the issue
of the one-child policy.
Anthony Ozimic
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
(SPUC)
9 February 2004
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