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Chen Guangcheng: Forced Abortion in China 'Still Extensively Exists'

  • Religion Today Religious persecution, missions, Christianity around the world
  • Published Dec 05, 2012

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, whose dramatic escape from house arrest and flight to New York captured the attention of the world in May, has issued a powerful video calling on the Chinese Communist Party to account for crimes committed against the Chinese people, ASSIST News Service reports. These include crimes committed against Chen's own family -- such as his nephew, who was just given a three-year jail sentence for defending himself when officials broke into his house and savagely beat him and his parents. Instead of improving, Chen says "the human rights situation in China is, in fact, getting worse. ... In China, no one is safe." Moreover, Chen says "the violence in maintaining China's one-child policy still extensively exists. It is a sin, because life is sacred." In 2006, Chen was detained and tortured for exposing the massive, systematic use of forced abortion and involuntarily sterilization in China. According to Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers: "Chen Guangcheng has endured incalculable suffering for human rights in China, and in particular, for the rights of women not to be forcibly aborted or sterilized. He has confirmed that these barbaric practices are still being used 'extensively.' ... The leaders of the United States should join Chen in calling for a peaceful transition away from policies that are oppressing and terrorizing the people of China, who are one-fifth of the population of the earth."