As I wait for normal business hours to begin so I can get into the doctor's office for a strep throat test, I decided to stay up the rest of the night and scan the news for interesting tidbits. I found horror. I am sure that Chen will be supported by a groundswell of international groups and individuals who are outraged by China's actions. Excuse me, to be PC... who are outraged by local (Linyi) Chinese official's actions!
Now if they used education to decrease the population increase, that has been found to work, and voluntarily at that. What did that study a while back find? The better off, and better educated you are, the less likely you will be to have children? (because you are more aware of the population issue I hope.)
Who Controls the Family?
Blind Activist Leads Peasants in Legal Challenge To Abuses of China's Population-Growth Policy
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 27, 2005; A01
LINYI, China -- A crowd of disheveled villagers was waiting when Chen Guangcheng stepped out of the car. More women than men among them, a mix of desperation and hope on their faces, they ushered him along a dirt path and into a nearby house. Then, one after another, they told him about the city's campaign against "unplanned births."
Since March, the farmers said, local authorities had been raiding the homes of families with two children and demanding at least one parent be sterilized. Women pregnant with a third child were forced to have abortions. And if people tried to hide, the officials jailed their relatives and neighbors, beating them and holding them hostage until the fugitives turned themselves in.
Chen, 34, a slender man wearing dark sunglasses, held out a digital voice recorder and listened intently. Blind since birth, he couldn't see the tears of the women forced to terminate pregnancies seven or eight months along, or the blank stares of the men who said they submitted to vasectomies to save family members from torture. But he could hear the pain and anger in their voices and said he was determined to do something about it.
( Read more... )
Now if they used education to decrease the population increase, that has been found to work, and voluntarily at that. What did that study a while back find? The better off, and better educated you are, the less likely you will be to have children? (because you are more aware of the population issue I hope.)
Who Controls the Family?
Blind Activist Leads Peasants in Legal Challenge To Abuses of China's Population-Growth Policy
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 27, 2005; A01
LINYI, China -- A crowd of disheveled villagers was waiting when Chen Guangcheng stepped out of the car. More women than men among them, a mix of desperation and hope on their faces, they ushered him along a dirt path and into a nearby house. Then, one after another, they told him about the city's campaign against "unplanned births."
Since March, the farmers said, local authorities had been raiding the homes of families with two children and demanding at least one parent be sterilized. Women pregnant with a third child were forced to have abortions. And if people tried to hide, the officials jailed their relatives and neighbors, beating them and holding them hostage until the fugitives turned themselves in.
Chen, 34, a slender man wearing dark sunglasses, held out a digital voice recorder and listened intently. Blind since birth, he couldn't see the tears of the women forced to terminate pregnancies seven or eight months along, or the blank stares of the men who said they submitted to vasectomies to save family members from torture. But he could hear the pain and anger in their voices and said he was determined to do something about it.
( Read more... )