Memorandum submitted by the Independent
Tibet Network
SUMMARY
Formed in 1988, Independent Tibet Network is
a research and campaigning organisation, formed of individuals
who support justice, human rights and independence for the Tibetan
and Uyghur peoples.
A central area of investigation and activity
has been human rights violations resulting from China's coercive
population-control policies, as applying inside Tibet and East
Turkestan, and the role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
which informs UK Government policy regarding China.
We are concerned that this major human rights
issue is not being afforded, by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
any meaningful examination, nor attracting the response such violations
demands. In particular we are disappointed to note, that the subject
is virtually absent from its 2007 annual report on human rights.
This memorandum explores the background to such
concerns, outlines the existence of medical atrocities inside
Tibet, includes accounts of coercive birth-control in Tibet, examines
the role of the FCO, the United Nations Fund for Population and
Department for International Development.
It concludes with a number of key recommendations,
which request the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to forward
to the FCO for their action.
NB: Appended material with this memorandum includes:
— A CD of images documenting the results
of Chinese shooting of Tibetans during recent pro-independence
demonstrations in Tibet during March a April 2008.
— and a copy of Mandatory Birth-Permit
Issued to Moslem-Uygur Women in East Turkestan.
— A Copy of "Orders of the
State" (ITN 2000)
INTRODUCTION
NB: reference to "Tibet" in this memorandum
refers to the historic, political and cultural regions of Tibet
comprised of U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo. Parts of these territories
were forcefully absorbed and renamed by Communist China into Chinese
provinces, leaving a truncated region, the so-called "Tibet
Autonomous Region". Mention of East Turkestan relates to
the Moslem-Uyghur territory, annexed and renamed by communist
China as "Xinjiang".
During March and April 2008 a number of demonstrations
erupted across Tibet, in which unarmed Tibetans faced bullets,
torture and imprisonment for peacefully challenging communist
China's brutal and illegal occupation of their country. Following
decades of oppression, and the constant erosion of their culture,
Tibetans took to the streets to demand independence and basic
human rights. A bloody crack-down followed, in which thousands
of heavily-armed Chinese paramilitary forces were mobilized, resulting
in the fatal shooting of civilians and monks, mass arrests, closure
of Buddhist monasteries, deportations, and an enforced propaganda
campaign in schools and religious centres.
NB: Images of Tibetan Victims Have Been Submitted
on CD to the Foreign Affairs Committee, as a part of this Memorandum.
Caution Though is Advised as the Nature of the Material is Graphic
and Disturbing.
The naked ferocity of China's lethal aggression
was witnessed and recorded, attracting the attention of the world's
media, and prompting the alarmed response of governments, which
called upon Beijing to moderate its violent military response.
With the Olympic Games just months away China's brutal suppression
in Tibet was to generate a wave of international protest demanding
justice, freedom and human rights for the Tibetan people. Unfortunately
such abuses are not always given full and critical exposure, as
evidenced by the BBC Four television series, "A Year in Tibet",
which ironically was broadcast during the unrest inside Tibet.
Mr Richard Klein, of the BBC commissioned Mosaic
Films and Sevenstones Media to produce the film. The locational
Director was Ms. Shun Shuyun, a Chinese writer and film-maker,
whose work is favoured and promoted by the communist Chinese regime.
Unsurprising perhaps that the oppression and systematic destruction
of Tibetan culture was not embraced by the film, whose makers
somehow managed to document daily living, yet omitted the cultural
and political suppression, which has operated inside Tibet since
China's invasion in 1950.
One wonders how those responsible for this series
felt as they witnessed Tibetans rising up against China's draconian
occupation, and noted the reports of unarmed Tibetans being gunned-down
by the very same Chinese security forces that would be charged
with protecting the Olympic Torch through the controversial procession
across London on 6 April. Many people from the UK, and beyond,
contacted our organization disturbed that the BBC continued to
broadcast this film as Tibetans were being killed inside Tibet,
for peacefully protesting independence from communist China.
1) Apart from presenting a distorted and
highly selective view of life inside Tibet, directed and written
by Mr.Peter Firstbrook, the film blatantly lied about China's
coercive birth-control policy as applied to occupied peoples such
as Tibetans and Uyghurs. Exposing the deception, apparent to any
with a knowledge of Communist China's appalling record on human
rights, and political and civil freedom, that the film's makers
were given unfettered access to film across Tibet, or allowed
to give publicity to issues Beijing regards as taboo. This was
demonstrated after some 39 minutes of the programme when the commentary
announced:
"...although China has had a single child
policy since the 1970s, the law has never been applied to ethnic
Tibetans".
(A Year in Tibet-Episode Two Broadcast 13th March
2008, BBC Television Four)
An assertion which bears an uncanny resemblance
to official Chinese propaganda.
2) This fact-free comment flies-in-the-face
of a wealth of information which documents coercive birth control
abuses within Tibet, reported by bodies such as Amnesty International
(AI), members of the United States Congress, Optimus, Foreign
Affairs Select Committee, Human Rights Watch, Independent Tibet
Network, Asia Watch and the British Medical Association. As noted
by AI:
"Despite laws prohibiting such practices,
many women continued to be subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations
by local authorities attempting to comply with strict family planning
policies".
(Amnesty International USA Report 2006)
3) This subject has been given meticulous
coverage and examination in reports such as "Children of
Despair" and "Orders of the State" (ITN 1992 and
2000 respectively. The latter forming written evidence to the
"Inquiry into Relations with China" Foreign Affairs
Committee Report on China 2000). The duplicitous claim that Tibetans
are exempt from the harrowing realities of coercive birth-control
is forcefully contradicted by the disturbing contents of the UK
television documentary "Undercover Tibet", in which
producer Jezza Neumann documented such abuses as being all too
real for Tibetans.
"China maintains that it doesn't implement
its one-child policy in minority regions such as Tibet, but we
discovered that this wasn't true. One woman told us how she'd
been subjected to a forced sterilisation. The secret police broke
into her house and said they would take all of her belongings
if she didn't go with them. Aspirin was the only anaesthetic she
was given before they cut her open".
(The Independent 31 March 2008)
4) Although such violations, which are widely
reported across Tibet and East Turkestan, are denied by communist
China, the amount of evidence to the contrary is overwhelming,
as acknowledged by Amnesty International:
"The authorities in Beijing initially exempted
(Editors Note: This assertion is derived from official claims
made by the Communist Chinese Government and therefore should
be treated accordingly) ethnic groups with a population of less
than 10 million from the one-child policy and even from family
planning more generally. It is clear, however, that controls have
been applied to these groups for many years..".
(Amnesty International Testimony to the Committee
on International Relations United States Congress. T. Kumar, Advocacy
Director for Asia & Pacific, Amnesty International USA 14
December 2004)
5) Official Chinese comments and documents
also confirm the implementation of coercive birth-control measures
operate inside Tibet. In a Xinhua report on 29 May 1990 Tashi
Namgyal, the then Deputy Director of the Regional Family Planning
Office, said that:
"..this reduction of population was needed
in order to curb the region's fast population growth rate and
to control its `population quality'".
(Increase Restriction on Birth of Children in
Tibet, World Tibet Network News, Feb. 13, 2000)
Addressing a meeting on family planning within
the so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region" (TAR), on 23
May 1996, Gyaltsen Norbu, former Governor of TAR stated that the
Party, government and family planning departments:
"should comprehensively implement the family
planning policy, adopt effective measures, carry out family planning
services right down to the peasants and herdsmen" (Source:
Ibid).
6) The "Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR)
Birth Control Leading Group Document Number Six", reveals
the degree of state control and coercion relating to "birth-control"
as imposed across the so-called TAR by the Communist Chinese authorities.
Behind the deliberately vague and extenuating terminology, and
chilling synonyms, one can easily recognize two basic facts. Tibetans
are indeed subject to China's notorious population control "measures",
and furthermore the methodology employed features a draconian
spiral of coercive measures, including forced sterilisations.
Chapter Two, Item Nine states:
"At the heart of agricultural and nomadic
areas, must stick to the principles of relying mainly on propaganda
education, voluntary and offering service, advocate fewer births
quality births. First start propaganda testing work and then gradually
widen the scope on that basis".
An official document from the "Ganzi Tibet Autonomous
Prefecture Committee for Birth Control" includes the "Communist
Party Central Committee Document Number 9" states:
"In order to raise the economic and cultural
standard and national quality in the minority areas, birth control
must also be implemented among minorities".
The document includes details of measures, population
targets and sanctions, all of which are imposed upon Tibetans
in that region.
"Ideological education must be the main
method in implementing, it must also be assisted with necessary
administrative and economic methods..... must promote the transition
of people's ideology of birth and further strengthen the consciousness
of practicing birth control".
7) These chilling euphemisms, so reminiscent
of the eugenic lexicon within Nazi Germany's sterilisation laws,
barely conceal the traumatising brutalities such laws presage
for Tibetan women. International delegations and observers have
also been aware of coercive birth control practices operating
inside Tibet. An Australian human rights delegation to China reported:
"Disturbing allegations of involuntary sterilizations
and forced abortions in China, particularly in remote regions
and among minority nationalities, continue to circulate. Such
allegations had been evident in the Tibet Autonomous Region during
the delegation's 1991 visit, and similar allegations were heard
by the delegation in Xinjiang during the current visit".
(Issue Paper-Chine le Point Sur la Politique
de l'Enfant Unique-IRB Canada January 1995)
8) More recently no less than a former United
Nations Special Rapporteur, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy noted in
an official UN report that:
"Women in Tibet continue to undergo hardship
and are also subjected to gender-specific crimes, including reproductive
rights violations such as forced sterilization, forced abortion,
coercive birth control policies and the monitoring of menstrual
cycles. There have been many reports of Tibetan women prisoners
facing brutality and torture in custody".
(UN Commission on Human Rights-Report of the
Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences,
Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, 27 February 2003)
9) Unless you are card-carrying member of
China's Communist Party, an executive of the United Nations Fund
for Population, official within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
Department for International Development, there is no doubt that
a spiral of birth-control enforcement is imposed upon Buddhist-Tibetan
and Moslem-Uyghur women. Measures which include fines, arrest,
detention, degrading treatment and physical force.
There is an extensive and well researched body
of evidence, including first-hand testimony, eyewitness accounts,
and a range of supportive information from a variety of sources,
including Chinese documentation, international media reports,
television documentaries, and accounts from former birth-control
officers, which testify that Tibetan women continue to face a
systematic policy of medically unnecessary, highly coercive, and
often harmful sterilizations and forced abortions, ostensibly
justified by China's nationwide population control policies.
10) Communist China adheres to a "one
family—one child" policy as a means to control what
it considers overpopulation problems. In theory, this policy applies
solely to nationalities whose populations exceed ten million,
only about six million Tibetans live in Tibet. More importantly
Tibet has no population problem, and it never has. In fact, prior
to 1950, about six million Tibetans lived in Tibet, a region roughly
the size of Western Europe. Even today, in the so-called "Tibet
Autonomous Region", which covers about forty percent of the
region traditionally called Tibet, fewer than 1.6 persons inhabit
each square kilometre. Tibet remains one of the least populated
regions in the world. There is absolutely no justification for
China to apply its "family planning" policies in Tibet,
the coercive birth control programme therefore suggests an intent
to destroy the Tibetan people, in whole or in part.
Which is a clear violation of China's international
obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide.
REPORTS OF
COERCION UPON
TIBETANS
11) One woman, who was covertly interviewed
inside Tibet described her agony at a forced sterilisation operation
without anaesthetic. She could not afford the fine, equivalent
to £70, and was one of six in her village who went through
the ordeal.
"I was forcibly taken away against my will.
I was feeling sick and giddy and couldn't look up. Apparently
they cut the fallopian tubes and stitched them up. It was agonisingly
painful. They didn't use anaesthetic. They just smeared something
on my stomach and carried out the sterilisation. Apart from aspirin
for the pain, there were no other drugs. I was so frightened,
I can't even remember how I felt".
(Extract of an Interview with a Tibetan women
as featured in the Channel Four Television Documentary, "Undercover
in Tibet" Broadcast 30 March 2008)
12) Ms Losar Kyi was formerly a family planning
and healthcare worker in Tibet's eastern region of Amdo (renamed
as Qinghai Province by China).
"Recently, I have seen a online report in
a UK newspaper about a US research team visiting some areas of
so-called Tibet Autonomous Region for doing research, without
escorts of Chinese Government. The report concluded that the Chinese
policy of birth-control and implementation on Tibetan women is
not forced! I am very much surprised to see it.
I am a Tibetan refugee woman from Amdo, North-Eastern
Tibet having reached Dharamsala (northern India) recently. In
my country, I completed a course from Medical School of Tsholho
in 1993 and from then, up to July 2001, I have been working in
family planning at a health centre for women and child. My job
known as `white dress' or doctor provided me with direct experience
of birth-control and mother and child care.
We have to propagate the Chinese policy of birth-control
among the farmers and nomads in villages and remote areas. It
claims `less family member will face no economic problems', however
the farmers and nomads are not opting for birth-control willingly
or because of economic pressure. If it is so, why it is made mandatory
target of birth control.
The common practice and methods of birth control
includes sterilization, ligature, `birth-control surgery', inter-uterine-device
of the woman have a miscarriage, induce labour etc. There is no
proper system of transportation in the remote rural regions of
my country, besides high hills and long routes for women and have
to come several times to hospital which is either in Shang or
Zong level. These arduous journeys are made because of the reality
of coercion (fines and force), so nobody comes willingly! In addition
all medical and surgery charges are paid for by the women herself.
This became a burden not economic development for a family.
In the district where I worked, carried out planned
birth-control operations. After taking women age group of 18-35
in villages and district level, forced birth-control operations
were carried out. The number of birth-control surgery to be done
in a place per year is fixed and we have to carry out these `surgeries'
to fulfil the given duties. In many places a forced `lottery system'
is applied to complete the number of women to be operated upon
against the will of respective women. People called it `human
murdering tax' rather than willingly.
For example, in year 1989-95, six hundred women
were given birth-control surgery. This is a case of a small district
where the population is about 50,000. Most operations are done
in the hospital of village (Shang) level where the medical equipment,
living places and other facilities are backward, besides there
is no health guarantee for our Tibetan sisters in these cold climates
of Tibet. Birth-control operation is implemented as per fixed
number in a place, applying various methods for birth-control.
In 1997 two hundred and forty women were subject to `birth-control
surgery' which resulted in the women having a `miscarriage', a
further four hundred and six women suffered induced labour surgery
in 1999.
A woman from Chhusang, Sengdeng village, Tsholho
Tsigor District of Tshongon (Amdo) died due to this type of birth-control
surgery in July 2000. In my view the findings of a place by the
researchers team cannot represent six million Tibetans living
in Tibet which is divided by Chinese into one autonomous region,
ten autonomous prefectures and two autonomous districts etc.
Any researchers (team or a person) who visits
Tibet under the knowledge of Chinese Government are allowed only
after well prepared, educated to answer and terrified them in
advance.
Hence to say that they visited villages without
official escorts and had complete freedom of movement can't portray
freedom (in Tibet). For example, the places, the villages and
the houses where to visit are fixed in advance, besides the village
head and regional secretary of communist party used to monitor
them. If any person answers against their instructions will face
penalty or punishment as per severity of talk. Therefore, Tibetans
in Tibet can be asked question under the protection of UNO, otherwise
they (Tibetan) can't express their feelings. I am praying for
such day to come. Being a doctor of women and child I had experienced,
saw, heard and am proud to prove it to the world, hence made this
fact appeal to correct the untruth, also sure people will understand
a genuine matter".
Testimony of Ms. Losar Kyi 6th March,2002 English
translation of Chinese and Tibetan version-www.tibettruth.com)
13) "After a woman gives birth to a second
child, she is taken to the county hospital to be sterilised. All
the women in my village had this done, but three of them died
after the operation. The authorities gave no compensation to their
families, and a month old baby born to one of the three mothers
then died a few weeks later. It was really terrible. All the women
in my village are very scared of this procedure, but they cannot
escape it".
(Testimony of 19 year-old Tamden Tsering from
Haiyan County Amdo Province escaped to India in December 1999-TCHRD)
14) "Most women are `encouraged' to
get themselves sterilised after having their limit of children
and once a year the County authorities order the township officials
to conduct a special lottery. The names of all the Tibetan women
in the township—regardless of age or marital status—are
put into a pot and then one is picked out for sterilisation. She
cannot refuse, and after her operation she is given a cash payment
and a position in the local administration to show her as a good
example. Every year my family prays together that it will not
be one of my sisters. The Chinese women in my area are safe, because
their names are never put into a lottery like this".
(Testimony of 22 year-old Dhundup from Gade County,
Golog, Amdo escaped to India in January 2000-TCHRD)
15) The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights
and Democracy examines and verifies similar accounts from Tibetans
who have escaped into exile. In one year alone TCHRD received
reports of 432 women who were subjected to forced sterilisation
or contraceptive procedures. In some areas up to 80% of Tibetan
women of childbearing age have been sterilised under coercion
or subterfuge.
Yet instead of restricting the practice of these
illicit "state policies", the Chinese government actually
endorses them, drawing connections with growth in the economic
sector.
An official report in the "Tibet Daily"
on March 23, 1998, stated that:
"Birth control policy introduced in Nyangdren
town in Lhasa was a huge success. This successful policy has been
implemented with regard to both the family planning procedures
of the People's Republic of China and the existing conditions
of Nyangdren town".
The report also states that the family planning
authorities have carried out the policy with "full co-operation"
from the local people. In Nyangdren town, 342 out of 379 married
women underwent sterilisation, and an additional 295 women were
provided with contraceptive pills. An official of the town authority
applauded the "successful performance" of The Department
of Health, and commented that the birth control policy has "directly
resulted in the alleviation of the living conditions and reasonably
increased the economic growth of the people".
NB: There are many more such accounts, examples
of which were featured in our report "Orders of the State"
(ITN 2000) a copy of which has been included as part of this memorandum
for the attention of the Members of the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee.
THE MYTH
OF MODERATION
16) In the scramble to profit from China's
expanding market many are willing to overlook the horrendous human
rights violations associated with this programme. The United Nations
Fund for Population, which has the uncritical support of the FCO
and DFID goes further. It refutes the very existence of abuse.
"I said in my opening that Dr. Sadik, who
is the current Executive Director of the U.N. Population Fund
has said that the Chinese program is, `totally voluntary'. She
has also said that there's no such thing as a birth approval or
a birth-allowed certificate. It doesn't exist. And I have the
quotes and the statements".
(Congressman. Mr.Christopher.H Smith, New Jersey,
Chairman. Sub Committee on International Operations and Human
Rights of the US Committee on International Relations, House of
Representatives, 10 June 1998)
17) Following the launch of its much publicized
32 County programme in China UNFPA asserted that within those
regions family planning was "fully voluntary" and denies
coercion. UNFPA also claimed that population targets and quotas
were relaxed, and that "women are free to voluntarily select
the timing and spacing of their pregnancies", and abortion
is not promoted as a method of family planning.
(UNFPA's County Program in China: Providing Quality
Care, Protecting Human Rights, UNFPA, 10 August 2001)
That exercise was extended to cover more counties
within communist China and according to UNFPA website:
"A client-centred, quality reproductive
health approach, pioneered in 32 counties with UNFPA assistance,
has been replicated in over 800 other counties (one third of the
country's total), resulting in its incorporation into national
policy".
(UNFPA Official Statement April 2008)
18) Given UNFPA's long record of wilfully
denying violations within China's population programme, informed
by an unstated, yet applied dogma, that restricting population
levels takes precedence over human rights, such a prostitution
of the facts is not entirely surprising.
Such falsehoods were thoroughly exposed by a
visit to China made by U.S. State Department investigators, who
in 2002 found that within the 32 counties in which UNFPA was originally
involved, the population programmes of communist "retain
coercive elements in law and practice".
(Letter from the U.S. State Dept. Delegation
to China to U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, 29 May 2002.)
19) Communist China's national family planning
law, adopted by the National People's Congress Standing Committee
on 29 December, which took effect 1 September 2002, is often cited
by FCO/DFID and multi-lateral population agencies as demonstrating
positive changes and improvements within China's population programme.
Along with aforementioned delegations to China, it is also used
to justify continued involvement with that programme, and "evidence"
of the supposed moderating influence such as UNFPA.
20) According to the late Doctor John.S
Aird, formerly Senior China Specialist at the US Bureau of the
Census:
"Biegman (UN Ambassador who lead the UNFPA
2001 delegation to China) said that the UNFPA had exerted an influence
toward moderation on the new national family planning law of the
PRC, adopted by the National People's Congress Standing Committee
on 29 December, to take effect as of 1 September 2002, but I have
examined the text of that law, and there is no sign of moderation
in it. It says nothing about prohibiting, punishing, or even avoiding
coercive tactics. It does not list and condemn specific coercive
measures widely used in China, although it does list specific
acts obstructing family planning and provides for their punishment.
It does not acknowledge `the rights of citizens
to determine the number and spacing of their children', although
the Chinese Government supposedly signed on to such a guarantee
at the 1994 World Population Conference in Cairo. It does not
affirm the citizens right to choose his own form of contraception.
It does not prohibit the widespread practice
of putting pregnant women or their relatives into detention in
order to force their compliance with family planning rules or
their submission to forced abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions,
and implants. It says nothing about any prospective `transition'
toward a `client-centered' or voluntary approach to family planning.
It does not mention the possibility of an imminent abandonment
of family planning targets or quotas; instead, it requires `detailed
population control quotas' and reaffirms the necessity to continue
the national and local `population plans', on which quotas and
targets are based. It speaks only vaguely about citizens `legitimate'
rights and couples them with a reminder of the citizens' `duty'
to practice family planning".
(Extract of Private Communication to Independent
Tibet Network 28th November 2001)
DENIAL, CONCEALMENT
AND EVASION
21) It is not a lack of credible information
which explains, what has been a consistently shameful inaction
by the UK Foreign Office (FCO), Department for International Development
(DFID), other Governments and multilateral population agencies,
but an absence of ethical principles and a callous indifference
to upholding human rights values. At the centre of such merciless
apathy lies an appeasing willingness to accommodate the worst
excesses of Communist China, because of commercial and political
factors, or in the case of population agencies, a fundamentalist
and uncompromising ideology, which insists that controlling population
levels must over-ride human rights considerations.
22) Such inflexibility appears not to be
based upon any intelligent process; one that evaluates information
in a detached analytical fashion and revises policy according
to the nature/degree of evidence and resultant conclusions. This
is clearly evident from FCO response to the wealth of detailed
documentation, argument and evidence provided over sixteen years
by Independent Tibet Network and Optimus which has been ignored
and/or denied.
23) The rigid nature of this arrangement
seems therefore based upon FCO ideology, sustained and given the
appearance of fact by individuals and organisations with a vested
(and possibly invested) interest in China and its population programme.
Thus FCO Ministers are supplied a "departmental view"
on this issue, hardly impartial nor based upon independent analysis,
and are denied the opportunity to reach a balanced conclusion.
Such obfuscation and stonewalling recalls the comments by US writer
Dorothy Parker "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks".
Clearly we are in the presence of a Civil Service mindset that
places commerce and trade considerations with China above human/reproductive
rights, while arrogantly considering its policy beyond critique,
examination or revision.
Serious questions remain unaddressed and this
issue has not, in any significant or meaningful manner whatsoever
featured in the 2007 FCO Human Rights Annual Report.
24) In a document of 216 information rich
pages, detailing a range of human rights issues and response this
is the only specific reference to the issue:
"China's population policy- Reports continue
of forced abortions and sterilisations, although these contravene
Chinese domestic law. We have never questioned China's right or
need to implement family planning policies but believe these should
be based on the principle of consent not coercion, as espoused
by the International Conference on Population and Development".
(Annual Human Rights Report-FCO 2007)
25) We are extremely disappointed to note
this minimal, tentative and extenuating response to what is a
major human rights concern within Tibet, East Turkestan and China
itself. We therefore call upon the Foreign Affairs Committee to
address these as part of its current inquiry and support our request
that these issues should form a regular and more prominent feature
of any future FCO annual report on human rights.
In the regrettable absence of any serious investigation
or monitoring of this issue by FCO we must challenge the dubious
assertions and flawed conclusions often presented by FCO "officials",
who appear to specialize in evasive, highly and selective arguments
in their justification for UK support of China's population programme,
UNFPA, IPPF and Marie Stopes International.
26) What is the point of FCO claiming UK
assistance for reproductive health is line with "principles
of free and informed choice" when it provides political,
moral, technical and indirect financial support towards the communist
Chinese programme, which is, in practice, highly coercive?
Moreover, the 1994 ICPD has been used as a smokescreen
and justification by the FCO, DFID, UNFPA, and IPPF to continue
its work within China on the basis of its apparent commitment
to reproductive freedoms and individual rights. Yet significantly
the Cairo programme:
Failed to specify practices NOT complying with
the principles of reproductive freedom.
Does not condemn forced abortion/sterilisation.
Fails to endorse the right to reproductive freedom
as absolute.
In exercising the right of reproductive freedom
it proposes the "responsibility" of the individual "towards
the community"—what does that signify in totalitarian
communist China?
How then can the ICPD justify or legitimise
UK support/sponsorship of China's coercive population programme?
27) Having previously acknowledged that
"abuses in family planning continue to occur in China"
FCO states that "the UK Government condemns them unequivocally".
Who is the target of this apparent censure? Is Her Majesty's Government
(HMG) denouncing official communist Chinese birth-control policies,
which have resulted in these violations? Is it condemning China's
State Family Planning Commission who are responsible for managing
and implementing the programme, and its attendant atrocities?
Has HMG formally expressed its disapproval of population agencies
(UNFPA, IPPF and Marie Stopes) which, despite years of involvement,
have failed to moderate or reduce the medical atrocities resulting
from birth-control policies?
28) The condemnation FCO claims HMG has
for abuses is seemingly the basis for securing ". .respect
for reproductive rights in China. .". Yet how can this
message have any conviction or integrity if denunciation is not
directed at those responsible for violations, in this case the
communist regime itself and the policies it has implemented?
Concerning the speculative "change of policy"
and "emerging evidence" FCO refer to (in their assertion
of improvements within China's population programme) without any
supportive evidence, appears to have been drawn from the assertions
of UNFPA, who in the face of a wealth of evidence for coercion,
repeat official communist Chinese propaganda that it has been
eliminated and targets and quotas removed. Yet as revealed below
those claims were exposed as being misleading and fact-free by
no-less-than the United State's State Department.
29) FCO arguments of "evidence"
showing improvements in the Chinese population programme continue
to rest largely upon two delegations to China. The UNFPA "investigation"
lead by Doctor Nicholas Beigman, which visited communist China
in October 2001 concluded no evidence for coercion, and its "mission
report" describes visits with communist Chinese officials
in Beijing, Guangzhou, Sihui county, and Hubei Province, all of
whom, not surprisingly, denied that China's family planning programs
were coercive in character. The report also maintains that both
the UNFPA and the Chinese government have agreed that UNFPA programs
in China will not include "any form of coercion", without
offering any specific evidence that this assertion is true. These
findings, which drew heavily from official communist Chinese assertions
are a deliberate attempt to obscure the appalling reality of violations
within the programme and UNFPA's continuing involvement in forced
sterilisations and forced abortions. Like that agency communist
officials who make these assertions have every reason to put the
best face on the family planning programs that they supervise,
especially when they come under scrutiny. They are not unbiased
observers, but interested parties.
30) We understand that, of the period the
UNFPA delegation spent in China, over half was spent in Beijing,
in meetings, banquets and barbecues with communist Chinese officials
from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Family Planning
Commission. During half-day visits to Sihui county, Guangdong
Province, and Qianjiang, the delegation was accompanied by Chinese
officials from the national, provincial, prefectural, municipal
and county governments.
It seems they went on guided tours of several
family planning clinics, and spent only 30-minutes on "household
visits". Faced with a phalanx of officials, no villager is
going to utter the slightest criticism of family planning policies,
or any other government policy for that matter. The risk of doing
so would be too great. In the absence of unsupervised contact
with ordinary Chinese (of the kind enjoyed by Population Research
Institute's (PRI) own investigators in communist China), it would
be impossible for the UNFPA delegation to accurately assess the
state of the family planning policy in Sihui county or anywhere
else in China.
31) As to the April 2002 "inspection"
of UNFPA's programme by visiting UK MPs one recalls the fact-free
conclusions reached by delegations to Stalinist Russia! We cannot
accept that FCO/DFID or Parliamentarians are unaware that communist
China is a totalitarian state, with all the propaganda and deception
which characterises such regimes (moreover it would appear they
were reliant entirely upon official Chinese translators to conduct
their supposedly independent inquiry). It is, after all, the same
party which denied, within hours, the Tiananmen Square massacre,
and it has a long record of duplicity and sophistry in covering
up what remains an appalling human rights record. The Regime which
ordered the bloody suppression of Tibetan protests in March and
April 2008, while denying that Chinese security forces fired upon
unarmed Tibetans (see images on submitted CD).
32) Interesting discrepancy between the
findings of the Parliamentary delegation and that made by US State
Department officials that same year;
A US State Department delegation to China in
May 2002 stated that:
"Our 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) Neither can UNFPA operate in the region
without the consent, active involvement and influence of the communist
party of China. Is it really that surprising therefore to note
that the MPs found no evidence UNFPA was "supporting coercive
activities". It would be like expecting the Red Cross, having
accepted an invitation from Nazi-Germany, to discover damning
proof of the forcible sterilisation of Jewish or Gypsy women.
These observations are, with the best will in the world, hardly
derived from unfettered, independent, exhaustive and informed
analysis. They could never be under the ever-present, draconian
gaze of the communist authorities. Such "requirements"
made a mockery of the US delegation of May 2002, which was constantly
monitored, bugged and trailed by communist officials. It was also
required to give 24 hours notice to the communist authorities
of intended visits, during which time any evidence of coercion
would be removed. Such constrictions undermine any integrity or
value these visits and brings into question why FCO considers
them objective indicators of lack of coercion. It also begs the
questions as to why this issue does not merit any serious examination
or inclusion within the annual human rights report of the FCO?
34) There remains genuine concern in this
country about FCO's association with communist China's birth-control
programme and its support for those multi-lateral population agencies
working there. This was most forcefully and eloquently expressed
recently in the House of Lords (25 October 2001) by Lord Elton,
Baroness Cox. Lord Renton and Lord Alton. Meanwhile, the present
policy of dialogue with communist China (which incredibly does
not include any discussion of coercive birth control practices)
as a means of improving human and reproductive rights has proved
a failure of staggering dimensions, as witnessed by recent events
inside Tibet and to a lesser degree East Turkestan. It is surely
time to reassess this aspect of relations with communist China
and return a badly needed sense of ethics and honesty to the heart
of UK foreign policy.
RECOMMENDATIONS
35) Independent Tibet Network recommends
that the FASC:
36) Insist that the FCO include, in all
future Annual Reports on Human Rights and China, the issue of
China's population control programme and include a detailed, forceful
and critical analysis, featuring and informed by material from
independent human rights organizations.
37) Calls upon the FCO to implement a three
year period of independent evaluation involving a forum of relevant
and independent organizations including human rights monitors
to more factually and independently assess the Chinese population
programme.
38) Request the FCO to establish an impartial
and credible investigation of the role of IPPF and UNFPA in the
Chinese programme and a realistic assessment of the potential
for change these organizations might deliver.
39) Call upon the FCO to conduct an impartial
assessment, with the participation of independent human rights
organisations, of the impact of the Chinese population control
programme on the Tibetan people and other subject peoples of the
Chinese occupied territories.
40) Demand that FCO urgently establish a
programme linked to future availability of international aid and
involvement aimed at encouraging the Chinese government to switch
their reliance on sterilization and abortion to the use of safe,
effective and voluntary methods of contraception so that the Chinese
programme can be brought into line with the Fourth World Conference
on Women, which reaffirmed the ICPD Programme of Action which
states that "In no case should abortion be promoted as a
method of family planning. All governments and relevant intergovernmental
and non-governmental organizations are urged to strengthen their
commitment to women's health, to deal with the health impact of
unsafe abortion as a major public health concern and to reduce
the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family
planning services".
41) Challenge the FCO for its consistent
fact-free assertion that UNFPA and IPPF are a moderating influence
against coercion.
42) Challenge the FCO for not complying
with the previous FASC's suggestion that China's population programme
be included in the UK-China human rights dialogue.
43) Call upon the FCO to submit a detailed
response to the FASC of why it has chosen not to feature China's
population programme in such a dialogue.
44) Challenge the FCO for its practice of
deflecting responsibility for the issue of China's population
programme to the DFID.
45) Independent Tibet Network invite the
FASC to press the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to take a lead
in reviewing international involvement in the Chinese programme
and in placing any future involvement firmly within an ethical,
sustainable, and equitable framework of foreign policy. The appalling
abuse this programme inflicts upon women demands that this must
be based upon action rather than gesture.
2 April 2007
|
