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China’s Man-Made
Disaster
By Dave Andrusko
There is so much
tragedy and ongoing danger in the aftermath of Japan’s
terrible 9.0 magnitude earthquake that we might forget
that it was not the only earthquake that shook that part
of the world.
On February 22, a
devastating 6.3 magnitude quake largely leveled the
central business district of Christchurch, the second
largest city in New Zealand, killing around 182 people.
I was reminded of
that tragedy yesterday when a colleague forwarded a
brief Associated Press story that had run under the
headline “China wants 'one-child' compensation from NZ.”
The story, now a week old, talked about the seven
confirmed deaths of Chinese students in the tragedy and
how the Chinese government was asking for “special
compensation” to their parents “because their loss was
magnified under the country's one-child policy.”
According to the
AP, a Chinese Embassy official told Radio New Zealand
that the Chinese parents “had lost not just their only
child, but also a future breadwinner.” Cheng Lei said,
"You can expect how lonely, how desperate they are ...
not only from losing loved ones, but losing almost
entirely the major source of economic assistance after
retirement.”
Obviously, it
would be exceedingly poor taste to take cheap shots. The
parents didn’t institute China’s malicious one-child
policy; we don’t know if they are the ones seeking extra
compensation from New Zealand’s Accident Compensation
Corporation; and, either way, under a coercive policy
that meant that most families were allowed to have only
one child, the loss of that child---beyond the emotional
trauma--could be economically devastating.
But as I
contemplated the New Zealand disaster, an act of nature,
I couldn’t help think of the many stories we’ve written
over the years about the forced abortion and forced
sterilization in China, an act of man. As pro-life
champion Rep. Chris Smith wrote on the 100th
International Women’s Day (quoting the U.S. China
Commission) the one-child policy is “marked by pervasive
propaganda, mandatory monitoring of women's reproductive
cycles, mandatory contraception, mandatory birth
permits, coercive fines for failure to comply, and…
forced sterilization and abortion” (www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/March11/nv030911part4.html).
Our condolences go
out to all the families of all the earthquake victims.
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Part Two
Part Three
Part Four |
