Today, Reuters reports on forced abortions in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.By way of complete contrast, a couple of months ago, the British government decided to send more than a hundred paintings by the English Romantic artist J M W Turner to be exhibited in Beijing – after the successful visit of the Terracotta Army to London – as part of a "wider approach to building understanding between the two countries".
Why should it be acceptable to make such a gesture towards modern China, as if the Chinese government runs some sort of civilised regime, when it has legislation in force which permits savage brutality to women and their babies? (See my answer below.) Can you imagine such a gesture being made to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or, come to think of it, Adolf Hitler's Germany?
Reuters reports:
" ... three young surrogate first-time mothers were discovered by authorities hiding in a communal flat. Soon afterwards, district family planning and security officers broke into the flat, bundled them into a van and drove them to a district hospital where they were manhandled into a maternity ward, the mothers recounted to Reuters.
"'I was crying 'I don't want to do this'," said a young woman called Xiao Hong, who was pregnant with four-month-old twins.
"'But they still dragged me in and injected my belly with a needle," the 20-year-old told Reuters of her ordeal which happened in late February.
"The woman, who declined to give her full name for fear of reprisals, said the men had forced her thumbprint onto a consent form before carrying out the abortion ... "
Reuters goes on to report that Zhang Minan, a law professor at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University and an expert on the issue, says:
"'They (the authorities) do have the right (to force abortions) ... "
In answer to the question I pose above: It's OK for Britain to deal with the Chinese government as if they run some sort of civilized regime, because, as I reported last year, the UK government, (along with Obama's administration and virtually all Western governments) are complicit in China's policy of forced abortions. The UK is the fourth highest funder of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), according to their annual report, and UNFPA's involvement in China's one child-policy is very well-documented.
