By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
BEIJING, November 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Muslim Uyghur woman who is more than six months pregnant remains under guard in a hospital in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region awaiting a forced abortion by population control authorities who don’t want her to have a third child.
Arzigul Tursun fled from her village and went into hiding to avoid the abortion but was subsequently found and taken to the Municipal Watergate Hospital in Yining.
Radio Free Asia reports that Tursun’s husband, Nurmemet Tohtasin, said that “police, Party officials and the family planning committee officials, all came and interrogated us, and threatened that if we didn’t find Arzigul and bring her to the village, they would confiscate our house, farmland and all our property.”
Arzigul and Nurmemet already have two daughters at their home in the village of Bulaq. According to the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, Arzigul fled Bulaq when officials first urged her to have an abortion, but she returned after her family received threats of asset seizure.
“We considered our two girls,” Nurmemet said in a telephone interview with the Uyghur American Association. “If the house and properties were taken away, how would they live? So my wife came back home and went to the hospital.”
An AP report said that physicians have delayed performing the forced abortion because of rapidly developing international interest in the case due to pressure from pro-life and human-rights groups who have expressed concern that Tursun’s health could be threatened by the abortion.
U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican and House Ranking Member on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote to China’s ambassador to Washington, Zhou Wenzhong, on Thursday to demand that “the nightmare of a forced abortion” not be carried out.
“I appeal to the Chinese Government not to forcibly abort Arzigul, a Uyghur woman now in the custody of China’s population police and awaiting the nightmare of a forced abortion,” wrote Rep. Smith.
“The Chinese Government is notorious for this barbaric practice, but to forcibly abort a woman while the world watches in full knowledge of what is going on would make a mockery of its claim that the central government disapproves of the practice, and of the UN Population Fund pretense that it has moderated the Chinese population planners’ cruelty. Human rights groups and the U.S. Government will be watching very carefully to see what happens to Arzigul and her family.”
China maintains a one-child-per-family rule on the majority Han Chinese, but allows minorities, including Uyghurs, to have more than one child. If minority couples are urban dwellers, they may have two children, while rural farmers may have three children.
While Tursun is registered as a rural dweller, her husband is registered in an urban area. This initially caused some confusion among population control officials, but they eventually demanded that she submit to the abortion.
Despite official denials, it has been documented that the Chinese Government regularly relies on forced abortion to enforce its one-child population control program.
China’s official Tianshan Net states that population control policies in Xinjiang region have prevented the births of some 3.7 million people over the last 30 years.
To contact the U.S. embassy of the People’s Republic of China with your concern:
Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington DC 20008
Phone: (202) 328-2500
Fax: (202) 588-0032
Email: [email protected]
See related LSN reports:
China’s One-Child Terror Campaign Continues
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071008.html
Thousands of Chinese Peasants Riot over Brutal Birth Control Campaign
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07052202.html
61 Chinese Women Undergo Forced Abortion in 2 Days at Youjiang Hospital
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07042006.html