Could we do something about it?
China trying to force 6-months' pregnant woman to abort
By TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy Newspapers
A Muslim Uighur woman who is more than six months' pregnant remained under
watch in a hospital in China's far northwest Friday awaiting a forced abortion
by authorities who don't want her to have a third child.
A nurse tending to the woman at the maternity ward of a hospital in Yining,
near China's border with Kazakhstan, said physicians had delayed performing the
abortion because of international queries about her case.
China maintains a one-child-per-family rule on majority Han Chinese, with more
flexible rules for ethnic minorities, to contain its massive population of 1.3
billion citizens.
Those who violate the rule must pay large fines, although reports of zealous
officials ordering forced abortions in rural and semi-rural areas are fairly
common.
The case of Arzigul Tursun is raising attention because she is 26 weeks'
pregnant and supporters say an abortion could threaten her health. Her husband,
who goes by the single name Nurmemet, said officials in their village near
Yining learned of the pregnancy and warned the couple their house and property
would be seized if Arzigul did not undergo an abortion.
Arzigul is at the Municipal Watergate Hospital in Yining in the Xinjiang
Autonomous Region, which is populated heavily with Uighurs (pronounced
WEE-gers), a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority. Militant Uighurs seeking
independence from China have carried out a terror campaign that has intensified
this year, and social tensions in the region are high.
U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, wrote China's ambassador
to Washington, Zhou Wenzhong, on Thursday to demand that "the nightmare of a
forced abortion" not be carried out.
"The Chinese Government is notorious for this barbaric practice, but to
forcibly abort a woman while the world watches in full knowledge of what is
going on would make a mockery of its claim that the central government
disapproves of the practice," Smith said in a statement.
Arzigul and her husband already have two girls at their home in Bulaq village.
According to the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, Arzigul fled
Bulaq when officials first urged her to have an abortion but returned after her
family received threats of asset seizure.
"We considered our two girls," Nurmemet said in a telephone interview. "If the
house and properties were taken away, how would they live? So my wife came back
home and went to the hospital."
China's family planning policy allows minorities, including Uighurs, to have
more than one child. If minority couples are urban dwellers, they may have two
children, while rural farmers may have three children. Many majority Han
Chinese see those exceptions as unfair.
Arzigul holds a rural household registration but her husband is registered in
an urban area, creating some legal confusion. Local officials eventually
demanded that she terminate her pregnancy.
Nurmemet said the couple may still have until next Monday to appeal their case.
Reached at her daughter's hospital bedside, Arzigul's mother, who does not
speak Mandarin, said through a Mandarin-speaking nurse that the family does not
agree with an abortion.
China says its population would have swelled far more if 400 million abortions
had not been performed in the past three decades.
McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Hua Li contributed.
