Tony Blair is in China tomorrow (Monday, 4th August) as he puts it on MySpace, “answering questions from MySpace users about the global challenges we face, in particular related to our campaign to show how people of faith can help the world achieve its Millennium Development Goals. How we can join together as global citizens both of faith, and of none, to tackle the great social ills that we face today and provide the opportunity for young people to make a real difference?”As Anthony Ozimic, SPUC’s political secretary put it to me, what about the great social ill of abortion?
Since giving up the premiership (and being received into the Catholic Church) Tony Blair has repeatedly refused to repudiate the strongly pro-abortion, pro-human embryo research and pro-euthanasia by neglect policies he and his government pursued.
Under Tony Blair’s government, the UK was the world’s fourth highest donor country to the UNFPA, giving just under $US38 million in 2006. The UNFPA’s well-documented involvement in China’s one-child policy has been described as “arguably the greatest bioethical atrocity on the globe”. To their credit, earlier this month, President Bush's government withheld some $40 million from UNFPA, making a total of $235 million withheld over seven years on the grounds of the UNFPA’s participation in a programme of forced abortion and sterilization. See my post last week on this topic.
When Tony Blair goes to China to explain to global citizens how to tackle the great social ills that we face today, will any Chinese citizens be able to ask him any questions, who have been fined, had their property destroyed, imprisoned or tortured for resisting forced abortion, or forced sterilization, a policy funded by his government?
In-depth information about China's one-child policy can be found in SPUC's February 2004 submission to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
The hypocrisy of Tony Blair takes some beating.
