News

By Kathleen Gilbert

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, July 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Population Research Institute (PRI) is turning up the heat on the Obama administration for handing $50 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with news of yet another investigation confirming the UN group's complicity in China's coercive birth control policies.

In March and May of 2009, PRI carried out two separate investigations, covering 6 UNFPA “model counties.”  These are counties where the UNFPA claim that their efforts have “removed birth targets and quotas and introduced a quality-of-care approach” – a claim the investigators call “outrageous.”

PRI investigator Colin Mason and President Steven Mosher say they found that not only do coercive measures remain in force, but the situation is in some ways worse than in previous years, when an original investigation prompted the Bush administration to halt the UNFPA's U.S. taxpayer funding.

“We put boots on the ground, and found that the UNFPA's claim that it 'played a catalytic role in introducing a voluntary reproductive health approach in China' was patently absurd,” said Mason.  “The policy is just as coercive in these areas as anywhere else.”

“Women continue to be arrested for the crime of being pregnant,” said Steven Mosher.  “They continue to be forcibly aborted.  Minorities continue to be targeted.  The handicapped are forbidden children.  These violations of human rights are occurring right under the UNFPA's nose.  It is ludicrous to suggest that the UN population controllers do not know about them.”

In 2001, PRI submitted an exposé of the UNFPA's activities in China to the U.S. State Department.  President Bush responded by sending State Department delegates on a second investigation.  Although the team was welcomed and escorted by the Chinese government, the officials concluded that the UNFPA was in fact complicit in China's coercive birth control policies, and foreign aid funds were cut off from the UNFPA in 2002.

However, days after taking office in January, President Obama announced he would resume funding of the UNFPA without commenting on the investigations. 

According to U.S. law, known as the Kemp-Kasten amendment, no taxpayer funds may go to an organization that supports coercive birth control.  When the UNFPA was allotted $50 million in this year's omnibus appropriations bill, a clause was included that specifically insulated the UNFPA from the Kemp-Kasten prohibition. 

The bill explicitly prohibited the sum from funding programs in China; however, there is no evidence that the UNFPA's monies are not fungible, and could therefore be used to free up other funds for use in China.  In addition, the Kemp-Kasten amendment prohibits funds from going to organizations that support such programs, rather than prohibiting the programs themselves.

“United States law is clear: our tax dollars are not to be used to fund forced abortion or coercive measures overseas,” said Mosher.  “Yet it is equally clear that the UNFPA is involved in precisely what the law forbids.

“We call for Congress to recognize, even if the President will not, that funding for the UNFPA is de facto funding for coercive family planning in China.  Such funding should be suspended immediately.”

Mosher told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview today that he heard the accounts of human rights abuse from residents of three of the UNFPA's “model” counties in May: Fengning Manchu Autonomous County, Luan County, and Wenshui County.  In Fengning, Mosher spoke to several Manchus who confirmed that “heavy fines and forced abortions are the order of the day.”

PRI says that the UNFPA counties also facilitate the eugenic goals of the Chinese government. Mosher recounted his meeting with a mute woman in Luan county whom the investigative team learned had been forcibly sterilized. 

“She was very intelligent, and very friendly, and among the most vivacious people I met while I was in China – she communicated by hand gestures,” he said.  “Then we came to the subject of children, and she had been sterilized, because she was mute.  And what people don't realize about China's one-child policy is that it's also a eugenic policy. …

“Handicapped babies are killed at birth; if a person with a handicap applies to marry, they may be given permission to marry, but they first have to undergo sterilization.  So China doesn't want any children from people born with even minor handicaps.”

Mosher said that a report on the latest investigation would be completed this week and sent to several officials with the Obama administration, who have not responded to PRI's investigation in March of similar “model” UNFPA counties in China. 

Mosher expressed frustration at Obama's willingness to take the UNFPA's own claims “at face value,” in stark contrast to the Bush administration's reaction in 2001.

“If they don't believe us, [the administration] should take a look for themselves,” he said.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

U.S. Dept. of State Announces $50 Million Contribution to UNFPA 

On-the-Ground China Investigation Re-Confirms UNFPA Complicit in Coercive One-Child Policy 

Congress Snubs Proposed Amendments Blocking Coerced Abortion/Sterilization Funding 

UNPFA Loses $235 Million Due to Pro-Life Group's Efforts 

UNFPA Supports Coercive Family Planning-Including Forced Abortion-in China