As the western world moves toward authoritarian rule, an observation of a modern society under total oppression may give us a new-found perspective and appreciation for the jewel of liberty
Old-thinker news | Sept 18, 2007
By Daniel Taylor
Tyranny and oppression creates the most miserable existence for humanity. Creativity is squelched, free speech trampled, freedom of thought regulated by a choking fear of persecution and ridicule, innocents crushed, value of human life is void, and families are broken. Systems of despotism and tyranny never last, but while they reign a path of destruction always lays in their wake.
An observation of current events in China is a demonstration of modern day tyranny in action.
Population Control
One child policies, evoking mass protest in China today, are but one facet to their whole tyrannical system.
In April of 2007, NPR covered the personal stories of just a handful of the millions of women in china effected by coercive population control policies. Wei Linrong, a victim of forced abortion, tells her story,
“I was scared,” Wei told NPR. “The hospital was full of women who’d been brought in forcibly. There wasn’t a single spare bed. The family planning people said forced abortions and forced sterilizations were both being carried out. We saw women being pulled in one by one.”
The officials gave Wei three injections in the lower abdomen. Contractions started the next afternoon, and continued for almost 16 hours. Her child was stillborn.
“I asked the doctor if it was a boy or girl,” Wei said. “The doctor said it was a boy. My friends who were beside me said the baby’s body was completely black. I felt desolate, so I didn’t look up to see the baby.”
Medical sources say fetuses aborted in this manner would have been dead for some time, so the tissue is necrotic and thus dark in color.
“The nurses dealt with the body like it was rubbish,” Wei said. “They wrapped it up in a black plastic bag and threw it in the trash.”
A protest against China’s one child policy earlier this year drew around 2,000 people to a local population control office. The office was burned to the ground.
In a separate protest, around 50,000 people gathered to protest forced abortions, sterilization, and hysterectomies. The Chinese Army was sent to stop the protest. Hundreds of protesters were wounded and two were killed.
Watch news coverage of the protest:
Population reduction is a policy that has long been supported, researched, and implemented by some of the most influential elites of the world.
In 2000, the Rockefeller foundation gave $2 million to upgrade a drug factory in China which produces the abortion drug RU-486. As the Washington Post reports, the drug has been widely used in China’s population control efforts,
“RU-486 has been a key ingredient in China’s population control strategy for years. Of the estimated 10 million abortions performed annually in China, about half are carried out with RU-486, said Gao Ersheng, director of the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research.”
Widespread, documented reports of coercive population control policies in China led the the Reagan Administration to re-direct $10 million originally meant for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities in 1985.
In the 1998 edition of Foreign Affairs, Richard N. Gardener, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, lamented over the cessation of the United States support for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
“A major challenge to the next president will be to restore U.S. support for the UN Fund for Population Activities, which we have cut off over charges that China’s population program uses coercive abortion, something both china and UNFPA deny.”
Land Grabs
The land that millions of homes rest on in China is being sold to developers to build on, another facet to the Chinese government reign of terror. In one project alone - the Three Gorges Dam project - 1.2 million people are being forced to relocate.
Sky news traveled to China to document what is happening:
Farmers in Shenyou, China can be seen in this video fighting with shovels and other tools against armed men with various ordinances attempting to seize the land for development. Scenes such as this are happening all across China as the machine of the state rolls on.
Police State
Public execution, mobile death vans, police intimidation, harassment: The Chinese people face a rigid police state that seeks to silence dissent and manage the population.
BBC reporter Dan Griffiths traveled to China recently to investigate reports of unrest. He encountered a heavy police presence, checkpoints, and was detained an questioned extensively. Griffiths went to the village of Shenyou, where farmers fought against an attempted land grab.
“Round a bend in the road, I see two white vans. Several policemen are standing beside them. They look as out of place in rural China as I do.
The questions come thick and fast. What am I doing? Where have I come from? Who is my contact in the village?
Griffiths was continually harassed by the police at the town government headquarters, something that foreign reporters are faced with routinely.
“Mobile death vans”, used to execute criminals, are roaming across china.
The Asia Times describes the vans,
“As opposed to the shootings that took place in public, inmates are now executed in purpose-built vans in an almost clinical environment. Prisoners are confined to a bed, similar to an ambulance stretcher, and put to death with lethal injections.”
In 2001, China was projected to have executed more people in three months than the rest of the world.
Big Brother
As reported by the New York Times, China is set to begin issuing computerized RFID enabled identification cards to 12.4 million people in the city of Shenzhen.
“Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.”
In 2006 China’s Ministry of Public Security announced plans to issue 1.3 billion cards utilizing RFID technology.
The vice president for investor relations at China Public Security Technology, Michael Lin states that, “If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future.”
China’s use of surveillance has been exponentially expanding. As the New York Times reports,
“The Chinese government trade association for surveillance companies, which also regulates the industry, predicts that the surveillance market here will expand to more than $43.1 billion by 2010, compared with less than $500 million in 2003…”
…
“Terence Yap, the vice chairman and chief financial officer of China Security and Surveillance Technology, said his company’s software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.”
China is a window into the dark realm of tyranny. Liberty is a rare jewel in the world, and is something that is fought for continually. As trends toward authoritarianism are moving across the globe, history must be our guide, and tyranny must be resisted.