(LifeSiteNews) – Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, is lead signatory and co-initiator of a joint letter, in English and Mandarin, calling for UNESCO to strip Ms. Peng Liyuan, wife of General Secretary Xi Jinping, from her position as “Special Envoy for the Promotion of Girl’s and Women’s Education.”
Ms. Peng has demonstrated a lack of leadership in remaining silent regarding the plight of a Chinese woman – the mother of eight children – found chained in an open-air hut, thought to be the victim of human trafficking for more than 20 years.
To give the full story, here is the original video that caused the social media storm, which is still ongoing today (tw distressing content, not sure why the lock is blurred, as if that is the most shocking thing about this video..) pic.twitter.com/UOA5zrfeQ4
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) January 30, 2022
The letter is signed by more than 400 “people who care deeply about the rights and well-being of women and girls.” The other co-initiators include Jing Zhang, Founder of Women’s Rights in China, and John Churchill, Founder of Democracy China Media. Co-signatories include such luminaries as Chen Guangcheng, Teng Biao, Bob Fu, Ann Lau and Zhou Fengsuo.
The group is also launching a global petition calling for UNESCO to remove Ms. Peng from her Special Envoy status. The petition states:
“We think that Ms. Peng Liyuan is no longer suitable to be the UNESCO special envoy for girls and women. If Ms. Peng is still appointed as the special envoy, it will seriously undermine the reputation of UNESCO, and Peng’s special envoy status will become a laughingstock of the world.”
Background
The disturbing video of a woman, chained by the neck, wearing thin clothing in cold, winter weather, has gone viral in China, sparking outrage. The woman is shown living in a squalid hut with no door, in the rural outskirts of Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province. She is said to be the mother of eight children, seven boys and one girl.
The Chinese Communist Party has issued several, contradictory statements regarding the woman – including the allegation that she is suffering from mental illness – leading to speculation and skepticism on the part of Chinese netizens.
Reggie Littlejohn, issued the following statement in light of the video:
The plight of this forsaken woman is heartbreaking. It raises pressing questions. What is her true identity? Was she trafficked? How was she allowed to have eight children under the One Child Policy? Do the children all have the same father, or several fathers?
Why didn’t authorities in her village protect her? Why would it matter that she might suffer from mental illness? Would this somehow justify chaining her around the neck and leaving her in scant clothing in an unheated, open-air hut? Where is she now? Are she and her children safe?
The shocking treatment of this woman raises the issue of sexual slavery in China. Because of the lethal combination of son preference and a coercive low birth limit under the historic One Child Policy, tens of millions of baby girls have been selectively aborted or abandoned, just because they were female.
This has led to a situation where there are an estimated 30 to 40 million more males living in China than females. This catastrophic gender imbalance is driving sexual slavery within China and from the surrounding countries.
For several years in a row, China has been rated a “Tier 3” nation in the United States Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (“TIP”) Report, because “The [CCP] does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant effort to do so . . .”
Indeed, the TIP report raises the specter of the complicity of officials in sex trafficking:
Despite continued reports of law enforcement officials benefiting from, permitting, or directly facilitating sex trafficking and forced labor, the government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of law enforcement officials allegedly involved in the crime.
Did the officials in Xuzhou City know about the mother of eight, chained in their midst? If they did, why didn’t they help her? Were they complicit in her abuse?
Ms. Peng Liyuan, wife of Xi Jinping, was appointed “Special Envoy for the Promotion of Girls and Women’s Education” by UNESCO. Why have we not heard from her about this chained woman, and about the egregious epidemic of sex trafficking and sexual slavery in China? Does Ms. Peng really care about women and girls? We call on her to resign. Otherwise, UNESCO should remove her.