The recent article published by the Wall Street Journal stating that the Chinese Communist Party may be considering the end of all coercive population control policies in 2025 will no doubt be met with celebration by some. Before celebrating, I would note the following:
· The CCP has not ended birth restrictions. They are only considering the possibility of doing so in 2025.
· They have not repented of forced abortion or sterilization, but are considering this measure purely for demographic and economic reasons. They are desperate for new babies to renew their work force and balance out their rapidly aging population.
· Since they are heading into a demographic disaster, why do they need to wait until 2025? Until all coercive population control ends, women’s bodies remain in the domain of the State and the Womb Police are still in business. Women should be free to give birth to their children – now. According to a Radio Free Asia report, “an average of 8 million ‘extra’ pregnancies are aborted in China each year.” If the CCP waits until 2025, how many more tens of millions of “extra” pregnancies will be aborted – often by force? We call upon the CCP to end all coercive population control immediately.
· The Three Child Policy rule is that every couple is allowed to have three children. Therefore, it remains illegal for single women to give birth. If the CCP “eliminates” all birth restrictions, will they finally let single women give birth? Or will the new rule be, “all couples can now have as many children as they want”?
· Will the abolition of coercive population control be applied to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as well? The CCP is currently committing genocide against them, in large part through forced abortion and sterilization. They have detained tens of thousands of parents because they had “too many children.” We call on the CCP immediately to stop committing genocide against the Uyghurs through forced abortion and sterilization. We also call upon them to release all Uyghur parents detained in concentration camps because they have “too many children,” and to restore their children to them.
· The abolition of all coercive population control restrictions will not by itself restore the population of China. The CCP did not receive the baby boom it expected when it went from a One-Child Policy to a Two-Child Policy in 2016. Indeed, after the first year of the Two-Child Policy, the fertility rate declined to its lowest levels in decades. I believe the same will be true under the Three-Child Policy and would be true if all birth restrictions were lifted. The CCP has so brutally browbeaten the Chinese people into believing that one child is the ideal number, that many couples do not want more than one child. In addition, raising children is very expensive in China. The CCP has fallen victim to its own propaganda.
When the Three-Child Policy does not provide the boost in babies that the CCP wants, I hope it does not resort to forced pregnancy. Since coercion is at the core of all of its population control policies, regardless of the number of children “allowed,” the possibility of forced pregnancy cannot be dismissed.
Related Links
China Considers Lifting All Birth Restrictions by 2025. 6/18/21
“Chunhua” felt no one in the world cared about her–until our fieldworker found her.
Dear Friend,
Chunhua is a seventy-two year old widow. Her husband passed away recently from cancer of the esophagus. By the time he went to the hospital, the doctors said it was too late to help him. Little did she know that he had only three weeks left to live.
When her husband died, Chunhua felt there was no one left in the world who cared about her. She has a son, but he doesn’t visit. Chunhua says she is so poor she has nothing to give to her son, so her daughter-in-law keeps her son away. The daughter-in-law actually threatened divorce if the son kept a relationship with his mother!
Our fieldworker visited Chunhua to offer financial support and prayer. Chunhua says that when our fieldworker prayed for her, she felt better right away. She says she is so grateful, because even though she has lost her husband, there are still people on earth who love her and care about her.
Senior suicide is skyrocketing in China, including among widows in the countryside. We are the only organization in the world with a network inside China that is saving widows and baby girls. Our fieldworker comes to their door and offers them kindness, prayer and financial help: $25 a month. These funds are most often used for food and can make the difference between hopelessness and hope for these widows.
To learn more about our Save a Widow Campaign and how you can help, click HERE.
Screenshot: Gary Lane of CBN News interviews Reggie Littlejohn about China’s new Three-Child Policy
Dear Friends,
Thanks to CBN News and Gary Lane for allowing me to “Set It Straight” in this interview: “China’s 3-child Policy Is No Cause to Celebrate.” We discuss my conviction that forced abortion, especially of single mothers, will continue under the new 3-child policy, as will the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. Also, I challenge the Chinese Communist Party to release from concentration camps all Uyghur parents who were detained because they have three children. Please watch, like and share this 5-minute video. This will really help us get our message out! You can watch it HERE.
Peizhi is six months old, born into a poor farming family in rural China. She is the second daughter in her family. Neighbors laugh at them because they have no son, bringing shame on the family. But they love little Peizhi anyway.
Life is difficult for Peizhi and her family. Her mother seriously injured her leg two years ago, and never fully recovered. Now she is unable to do any fieldwork. She cooks and cleans for the family, and watches out for Peizhi’s grandfather. Peizhi’s grandfather lives with them, but he has dementia and needs someone to watch him all the time or he will wander away from home and not be able to find his way back. Peizhi’s father supports everybody, and this role is very stressful on him. As a poor farmer, he simply cannot provide for two disabled family members and two daughters, without the help of his wife in the field. According to Peizhi’s mother, her husband suddenly looks like an old man. She has been worried about finances and about the strain on her husband.
It was a great relief to Peizhi’s parents when our “Save a Girl” fieldworker visited them to offer support for a year. Peizhi’s mother said she believes Peizhi must “have an angel blessing her,” because the whole family has received good luck because of this beautiful little girl.
Reggie speaks to the people of Hong Kong, June 4, 2021
The people of Hong Kong are having their basic human rights stripped away before their eyes by the Chinese Communist Party. For decades, they have held a huge, candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, to commemorate the June 4, 1989 massacre on Tiananmen Square. The CCP has banned that vigil this year. Here is my message of encouragement and hope, which was streamed into Hong Kong on June 4.
Message to the People of Hong Kong June 4, 2021, 32nd Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Warmest greetings to the people of Hong Kong. I am greatly humbled to address you on this somber anniversary.
My name is Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. We expose and oppose forced abortion and the sex selective abortion of baby girls in China. We stand with the people of Hong Kong in your fight for basic human rights.
I imagine that on June 4, you will be watching this with a heavy heart. No one has been more loyal and dedicated than you have in keeping the memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre alive. For three decades, your massive, candlelight vigils in Victoria Park have been an inspiration to the world. You have remembered the freedom fighters who died on Tiananmen Square, so that their sacrifice would not be forgotten.
And now, you in Hong Kong are losing your own freedom. So many of your bravest souls are now languishing in jail. It is a hallmark of a totalitarian regime that it slams its greatest heroes in jail.
And yet, you keep fighting bravely on. The Chinese Communist Party is trying to re-write history, to blot out the memory of June 4, 1989. They are banning the Vigil, changing textbooks and museum exhibits, promoting the lie that Hong Kong’s brilliant success belongs to the Chinese Communist Party.
The authorities have cited health concerns about the coronavirus as the “reason” the June 4 vigil will be banned. Everyone knows that is just an excuse.
If the CCP really cared about health, they would not have unleashed the coronavirus on the world. They would not have forcibly aborted 400 million women and babies under the One Child Policy. They would not be executing prisoners of conscience to harvest their organs for transplant. They would not be committing genocide against the Uyghurs. And if the CCP really cared about health, they would not have massacred hundreds, or possibly thousands, of innocent victims on Tiananmen Square.
The CCP does not care about health. All they care about is expanding their power at your expense and at the expense of the whole world. They have no business hosting the Olympic Games in 2022. These Games should be moved or boycotted. We have launched a website, genocidegames.org, where you can sign a petition to move or boycott the Games. In fact, as I testified before the United States Congress a couple of weeks ago, I believe that all the 152 nations that are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention are required to boycott the Olympics, because they have committed themselves to punishing any nation that is committing genocide. And I believe that, because of its unleashing of the coronavirus, its theft of hundreds of billions in intellectual property, and its spreading of deadly fentanyl, the CCP should be designated as a transnational criminal organization.
You are so brave to speak truth to power from Chinese soil. Even if you can’t assemble in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil, you can still hold a candlelight vigil in your own home. You can put a candle in your window. You can say a prayer for those who died on Tiananmen Square. You can pray for the God of the universe to intervene on behalf of Hong Kong.
The CCP wants everyone to believe that it has absolute power, but it does not. The CCP thinks that it is God, but it is not. And God will not be mocked.
The CCP can stop a vigil, but it cannot stop something even more powerful than a vigil. It cannot stop the power of the human heart lifted up in desperate prayer. It cannot stop the power of God, who loves you and answers your prayers. I believe that, if we all join together and fast and sacrifice and pray, in His time and in His miraculous way, the God of freedom will set you free.
I am with you, but far more important, God almighty – the God who created heaven and earth — is with you in this battle. Thank you and God bless you.
In an article entitled, “China Relaxes Family Planning Policy to Allow Couples to Have Three Children,” a Chinese Communist Party-affiliated news outlet announced curtly today:
China officially further relaxed its family planning policy, allowing couples to give birth to three children. The move aims to improve China’s population structure and actively respond to the country’s aging problem. This is a developing story. We will update it later.
China’s move from a two-child policy to a three-child policy is nothing to celebrate. China should abolish all coercive population control. It is not the business of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to “allow” couples, or single women, to have children of whatever number.
A three-child policy keeps the “womb police” in business. They will still be tracking women’s fertility and birth, and punishing those who find themselves “illegally pregnant.” According to a 2020 Radio Free Asia report, “. . . an average of 8 million ‘extra’ pregnancies are aborted in China each year.” Since the new three-child policy applies to only “couples,” single women will still be forcibly aborted, as will fourth children. These gross violations of women’s rights and human rights must be stopped, effective immediately.
Will the three-child policy apply only to Han Chinese, or will it also apply to the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang / East Turkistan? According to a ground-breaking report by the Associated Press, “Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.” Under the new three-child policy, will the CCP immediately release any Uyghur parents detained because they have three children?
A three-child policy will likely increase gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. When the two-child policy was instituted, some couples who had a girl for their first child decided to have a second child – but only if that second child would be a boy. In 2017, for example, shortly after the two-child policy was instituted, one woman’s husband, who wanted their second child to be a boy, forced his wife to abort four girls in a year, and then she died. I am concerned that the gender of third children will be heavily skewed towards males, because the females will have been selectively aborted, due to deadly son preference.
Most couples in China are not willing to have a second child of either gender, largely because of the expense. For this reason, China did not experience the baby boom it had expected when it moved to the two-child policy in 2016. Indeed, its birth rate has plummeted to the lowest in decades. It is facing a demographic crisis because of its rapidly aging population. The move to a three-child policy is too little, too late to avert this impending disaster.
Why, then, is China retaining coercive population control of any kind? As I have long argued,the CCP will never end coercive population control, because coercive population control is keeping the CCP in place. It is social control, masquerading as population control. Terror is the purpose of the policy.
The CCP is a brutal, totalitarian regime, responsible for multifarious human rights abuses. Coercive population control, however, is unique in that it touches each individual and community. The CCP maintains its terrifying grip on power by extending its arm from Beijing and inserting its hand into every womb to declare life or death over the beating heart inside.
Related Links:
China Relaxes Family Planning Policy to Allow Couples to Have Three Children, 5/31/21
Screenshot: Reggie Littlejohn and Raymond Arroyo on The World Over, May 20, 2021
Dear Friend,
Last Tuesday, I testified at a United States Congressional Hearing entitled, “China: Genocide and the Olympics.” The hearing was chaired by Congressman Chris Smith, who I believe has done more for Chinese human rights than anyone else on Capitol Hill. Raymond Arroyo interviewed us both for one of EWTN’s flagship broadcasts, The World Over. The interview discusses the hideous atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party, and why they do not deserve to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Please watch and share this powerful, 12-minute interview. You can watch it HERE.
China’s Genocide in Xinjiang / East Turkistan Must be Punished Under the Genocide Convention of 1948; The 2022 Olympics in Beijing Must Be Moved or Boycotted
“In January [2021], the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the United Nations urged every country to honor the six million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide by developing programs to prevent future genocides. In a UN ceremony, American and European leaders joined Holocaust survivors in conveying the urgent responsibility to remember the Holocaust by defending the truth – now more than ever. For the last 76 years, we have committed to “never again” permit genocide to happen on our watch.
“But it’s happening – right now.“
With these words Ellie Cohanim (Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the United States Department of State) and Keith Krach (former Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment) open their Opinion piece, published in Newsweek, entitled, “The Chinese Communist Party is Committing Genocide. Now. You can Stop It.”[1]
The reference to the Holocaust is apt, especially considering that in 1936, the Olympic Games were held in Berlin, Germany. Predictably, they proved to be an enormous propaganda windfall for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, affording it unwarranted international prestige, legitimacy and credibility. Arguably, these benefits served as a smokescreen for the horrific crimes against humanity that the Nazi regime subsequently unleashed in its genocidal Holocaust against six million Jews and in the course of the world war Hitler precipitated.
Today, we are confronting another totalitarian regime actively engaging in another genocide. We must not make the mistake again of allowing a genocidal regime to glory in hosting the world’s most prestigious international event. Indeed, as a signatory of the Genocide Convention of 1948, the United States cannot allow this to happen.
The Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) Is Committing Genocide Against Ethnic Minorities in Xinjiang
On his last full day in office, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo issued an official determination that the Chinese Communist Party “has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs . . .” as well as “genocide.”
Former Sec. Pompeo’s Statement sets forth the CCP’s crimes against the Uyghurs, including widespread arbitrary imprisonment, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced labor, draconian restrictions on freedom of religion, and torture. He concludes, “. . . we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state.”[2]
Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken has confirmed this genocide determination.[3]
The abuse of the Uyghurs by the CCP fulfills every element of the crime of Genocide[4], under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”)[5] and the Rome Statute.[6] Article II of the Genocide Convention states:
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The CCP is committing not just one, but all five of these acts of genocide.[7]
There has been some dispute as to whether the CCP has exhibited the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part,” the Uyghurs. I believe they have, for two reasons. First, their rhetoric reveals this intent. According to Sec. Pompeo’s Genocide Determination:
[Chinese Communist] Party apparatchiks . . . are delivering far darker messages to their own people, portraying Uyghurs as “malignant tumors,” comparing their faith to a “communicable plague,” and exhorting the Party faithful to implement a crushing blow, telling them “you can’t uproot all the weeds hidden among the crops in the field one-by-one; you need to spray chemicals to kill them all.”[8]
Second, intent need not be stated, but “more often, it must be inferred from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts.”[9]
Remedies: The Genocide Convention Requires the “Prevention and Punishment” of the CCP’s Genocide
Whether the CCP’s acts against the Uyghurs are “crimes against humanity” or “genocide” is more than difference in semantics. The fact that these acts constitute genocide brings into effect the requirements and remedies of the Genocide Convention. Specifically, Article 1 of the Convention states, “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.” As a Contracting Party, the United States has committed itself to “prevent and punish” those committing genocide. So have the other signatories the world over. A global boycott of the “Genocide Games” in Beijing should be just the beginning of this punishment.
Further, under Article VIII, “Any Contracting Party may call upon . . . the United Nations to take such action . . . as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide . . .” The United States and other Contracting Parties should launch an initiative at the United Nation to punish the CCP for its genocide and prevent further acts of genocide.
The CCP disputes that it is committing genocide, activating Article IX: “Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation . . . of the present Convention . . . shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.” Thus, the United States and other Contracting Parties can call upon the the International Court of Justice to decide on the dispute between the U.S. and the CCP as to whether the CCP is committing genocide.
Domestically, under Article V, the United States has agreed “to enact . . . necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide . . .” Opposing the CCP’s genocide in Xinjiang is an issue that has received powerful bipartisan support, which can be summoned to enact further legislation to give teeth to our opposition to genocide.
The Olympics Should Be Moved or Boycotted.
On April 15, 2021, more than 100 leaders associated with national security, human rights and faith organizations signed an Open Letter[10] to the leadership of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (formerly the “USOC,” now the “USOPC”) urging it to press for the 2022 Winter Games to be held in a venue other than Beijing, China, in light of the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. If a “Freedom Games” venue cannot be offered as an alternative to the “Genocide Games,” we have called for a boycott. As co-author and a primary signatory on that letter, I ask that it be entered into the Congressional Record.
While we did not receive a direct answer from the USOPC, I believe we received an indirect answer. Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the USOPC to Congress, wrote in a letter to Congress, obtained by Politico[11], that the United States should not boycott the Games. She acknowledges that those who have called for a boycott “have raised valid concerns about China’s conduct, including the oppression of the Uyghur population which the United States has designated a genocide.” At the same time, she asserts, “an athlete boycott of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not the solution to geopolitical issues.”
This assertion ignores the fact that human rights in China have seriously deteriorated since they hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Since that time, not only has the CCP committed genocide against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. It has also committed egregious human rights abuses in Tibet and Hong Kong, employed the world’s most repressive “surveillance state,” complete with a “social credit system” to ensure submission, become one of the world’s worst persecutors on the basis of religion, practiced forced organ harvesting, continued its practices of systematic forced abortion and sterilization under the One and Two Child Policies, has one of the world’s worst records for human trafficking and sexual slavery, and despoiled the environment.
The USOPC’s statement also ignores the inconvenient truth that signatories to the Genocide Convention are obligated to prevent and punish those committing genocide, as discussed above.
China Should Be Banned From Participation in the Olympics.
South Africa was banned from the Olympics in 1964 to 1988 because of its practice of apartheid.[12] Likewise, the International Olympic Committee should express the disapproval of the CCP’s genocide and other crimes against humanity by banning China from the Olympics.
The CCP is a Transnational Criminal Organization[13]
In addition to the hideous abuses to which the CCP has subjected the longsuffering Chinese people and the captive nations under its boot, it is also spreading its aggressive contagion all over the world. The CCP is relentless in advancing its own interests at the cost of others. It is threatening Taiwan and aggressively pursuing control of the South China Sea. It unleashed Covid-19 on the world, concealing its knowledge of human to human transmission and pushing international travel while locking down internal domestic travel, costing millions of lives worldwide and more than half a million in the United States alone.[14] The CCP is practicing “debt trap diplomacy” through its “Belt and Road” initiative.[15] It is flooding the United States with deadly fentanyl.[16]
It is time to call the CCP what it is: a transnational criminal organization. The world should treat the CCP as a Pariah State, breaking all diplomatic and economic ties.
Conclusion
The 2020 Olympic Charter states, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Honoring arguably the greatest human rights abuser in the world with the privilege of hosting the Olympics runs directly counter to the Olympic Charter. Holding the Games in Beijing does a tremendous disservice to athletes, as well as to those suffering under the totalitarian fist of the CCP. The least we can do is move or boycott the Olympics.
Reggie standing in front of the United States Capitol, before testifying at a previous hearing
Dear Friend,
We have some exciting news! WRWF’s Reggie Littlejohn will be testifying before two Congressional Committees on Tuesday, in a hearing entitled, “China, Genocide and the Olympics.” We are hoping that this hearing will be viewed all over the world and will ignite a powerful movement to hold China accountable for its many human rights atrocities. See our Announcement below for details on how you can watch this hearing.
* * *
On Tuesday, May 18 at 1:00 p.m. EDT, The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China will hold a joint hearing to examine the implications of holding the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in the People’s Republic of China, regardless of their serious violations of human rights. The Hearing announcement can be viewed HERE. The hearing itself may be watched live HERE.
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and chair of the Olympics Task force of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, will testify about China’s many egregious human rights violations and crimes against humanity. She will discuss the reasons that the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang/East Turkistan constitutes genocide. She will explore the implications of this determination under the Genocide Convention of 1948, especially concerning a possible relocation or boycott of the Games.
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and the Committee on the Present Danger: China are spearheading an initiative to stop the “Genocide Games.” Their website and Open Letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee can be viewed HERE.This letter was signed by more than one hundred leaders associated with national security, human rights and faith organizations. As co-author and a primary signatory of this Letter, Littlejohn will ask that the Letter be entered into the Congressional Record.
Hosted by:
Rep. Christopher Smith, Co-Chair, TLHRC
Rep. James McGovern, Co-Chair, TLHRC
Sen. Jeffrey Merkley, Chair, CECC
Witnesses:
Dr. Yang Jianli, Founder and President, Citizen Power Initiatives for China
Susan V. Lawrence, Specialist in Asian Affairs, Congressional Research Servidfe
Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights Watch
Rayhan Asat, Human Rights Lawyer and Advocate
Samuel Chu, Managing Director, Hon Kong Democracy Council
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
