The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved a resolution on July 30 calling on the Chinese government to stop abusing and oppressing its people.  In response to recent news stories regarding China’s gross human rights violations, the House took a stand of solidarity with Chinese victims in an effort to ensure that the Olympic Games take place “in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.”  The full House passed the resolution, including two key amendments by Rep. Chris Smith (R-New Jersey), by a 419 to 1 vote. 

Smith, the lead Republican cosponsor of H. Res. 1370, introduced one amendment condemning China’s coercive population control policy that includes forced abortion, and a second amendment urging the release of at least 734 political prisoners.

The Chinese people suffer an imposed population control program known as the “one-child policy” that limits most Chinese couples to one child.  The Chinese government brutally applies the policy through compulsory sterilization, forced abortions, and heavy fines for “illegal” children that may reach as high as ten times a worker’s annual salary.

Rep. Smith added the amendment to bring extra attention to the “barbaric, cruel and hideous crime” of this population control program.

Not only does this program coerce mothers into aborting their babies, critics also blame the program for a rising gender imbalance in China.  Since boys are customarily favored, due to the expectation that they will take care of their aging parents, some couples abort female babies.  In a few years, China will have 40-60 million “missing girls,” girls who were aborted or killed soon after birth, according to experts.  With more men than women, prostitution and trafficking will increase.

Rep. Smith commented, “As a direct result of the government’s one-child policy, tens of millions of girls are missing today — dead due to sex selection abortions — creating a huge gender disparity.  The lost girls of China is gendercide.  With its heavy reliance on forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and ruinous fines for illegal children, the policy, in effect since 1979, constitutes one of the greatest continuous crimes against humanity in human history.”

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) recalled testimony presented in a congressional hearing.  “In the committee we heard the most horrific stories of these so-called family planning technical service

workers literally breaking into homes, dragging women in the ninth month of pregnancy off to clinics, forcing abortions on them and in one case after another, going to horrific means to ensure that the newly born child’s life had been completely snuffed out. … I personally believe that the selection of China as the site of the 2008 Olympic Games was a historic error.  The Olympics is a symbol of the human spirit and in that regard, a symbol of human freedom, and this police state therefore is precisely the wrong venue for a celebration of human dignity and the human spirit.”

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) helped create China’s coercive population program and continues to provide resources to China’s family planning agency.  UNFPA has lost U.S. funding under President Bush because of its involvement in China’s forced abortions and sterilizations.

Yet, recently, liberal members of Congress voted to give UNFPA $60 million.  If this measure passes, U.S. taxpayers will be personally funding the atrocities condemned in this resolution against China.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) President Wendy Wright says, “China’s cruelty to its own citizens knows no bounds.  We pray that it will end.  We call on Congress to take the next step after condemning China’s human rights abuses, and ensure that the U.S. is not in any way assisting the Chinese government in its abuses.”

CWA urges citizens to join Congress in repudiating China’s human rights abuses, including forced abortion, by opposing U.S. funding of any organization that is complicit in China’s human rights violations, especially UNFPA.