By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
ATLANTA, GA, September 19, 2008 (LIfeSiteNews.com) – The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has ruled that Shao Yu Yuan, who feared forced sterilization under China’s one-child policy if she were deported to her homeland, has won the right to a new hearing before the Board of Immigration Appeals.
In an affidavit submitted to the court, Yuan, who, according to an AP/Macon Telegraph report, was arrested in Miami for illegal entry into the country in 1999, said that since 2005 “family planning” officials in her native Fujian Province have become more aggressive in enforcing sterilization of women who have given birth to more than one child.
Family members told Yuan that many pregnant women in her hometown were taken by authorities and forced to undergo forced abortion and/or sterilization, she told the court.
The three-judge panel of the Appeals Court said that Yuan, married with two daughters, 5 and 7, and living in Harrison, Arkansas, can challenge her denial of asylum in the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture.
Chinese authorities’ history of abuse and violent intimidation in the enforcement of the one-child policy has been the focus of many LifeSiteNews.com reports.
Shao Yu Yuan’s testimony of the escalation of brutal tactics and physical force to coerce women to submit to abortion and sterilization coincided with an eruption of stories coming out of China in 2005 that exposed the country’s violation of human rights.
In late summer of 2005, Time magazine published a report describing the situation as “one of the most brutal sterilization campaigns of recent years.”
Time reported the case of Li Juan, a woman whose full-term baby was forcibly aborted. “The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan’s due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. ‘At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot,’ says the 23-year-old. ‘Then, after a while, I couldn’t feel her moving anymore.’”
The Washington Post, in September 2005, reported the experiences of Feng Zhongxia, 36, from Maxiagou village, in a rural part of Linyi Province. She described how, seven months pregnant, authorities detained 12 members of her family, denying their freedom until she submitted to an abortion.
“My aunts, uncles, cousins, my pregnant younger sister, my in-laws, they were all taken to the family planning office,” Feng said. “Many of them didn’t get food or water, and all of them were severely beaten.”
Family planning officials “told me they would peel the skin off my relatives and I would only see their corpses if I didn’t come back,” Feng said. After turning herself in, a doctor inserted a needle into her uterus. The next day she delivered the dead baby. “It was a small life,” she said.
After the abortion, she was forcibly sterilized as well. “I’m a human being,” she said. “How can they treat me like that?” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08…)
Joseph D’Agostino, spokesman for the Population Research Institute in Front Royal Virginia, told LifeSiteNews.com in a report in October 2005, that the newly implemented Chinese government policy that officially made the use of physical force illegal would make little difference. As long as local population officials were still evaluated by superiors according to how many babies were born in their regions, said D’Agostino, force and violence would be used in enforcing the one-child policy.
Shao Yu Yuan’s success in appealing her deportation order means she and her children will likely be allowed to stay in the U.S.
Yuan’s attorney, Ted Cox of New York, said her case will be heard by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Virginia. “After this, I can’t see it losing,” Cox said in the AP report.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com reports:
Slavery, Prostitution Effect of China’s One-Child Policy
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/mar/04030908.html
61 Chinese Women Undergo Forced Abortion in 2 Days at Youjiang Hospital
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07042006.html
Forced Abortion Still A Reality in China Says New Amnesty Report
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05052706.html
Chinese Woman Falls to Her Death Fleeing Forced Abortion of Twins
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06070405.html
China’s One-Child Policy Burdens Younger Generation
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082707.html