China: A
Window Into the Dark World of Tyranny
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
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.
"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."
Chinese "mobile death van"
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.”
"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.
One child policies, evoking mass
protest in China today, are but one facet to their whole tyrannical
system. 
