China Gets Poor Human Rights Grades Over Abortion Prior to 2008 Olympics 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 7, 2007
Beijing, China (LifeNews.com) — Just one day after China made worldwide news over its reforming of public relations slogans related to its one-child policy, a leading human rights group says the Asian nation still gets poor marks. The new Amnesty International report says China is doing a poor job of treating its citizens prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics.
China will host the international games, meant to highlight world peace and cooperation.
Yet it gets low grades from AI in part because of how it has treated its citizens who violate the policy and those who defend them.
Amnesty International, which has come under fire itself for a new policy promoting abortion for women who are victims of sexual abuse in tenuous regions of the world, warned that the human rights abuses need correcting with one year to go before the Olympics.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said the group’s new report on China "is a disturbing reminder of how far China still has to go to make good its promise to use the Olympics as a spur to improving human rights."
"With journalists, lawyers and activists being imprisoned, with the Internet heavily controlled and censored, and with even housing rights campaigners being locked up for complaining about people evicted from their homes to make way for the games, the situation is extremely serious," Allen added.
The report took China to task, in part, for its treatment of Chen Guangcheng, a 35 year-old blind attorney who was apprehended by local officials on bogus charges after he exposed a brutal force abortion campaign in the city of Linyi.
Chen was preparing a class action lawsuit for the thousands of women and their families forced to have abortions, or who were given egregious fines or had their homes or possessions taken or destroyed.
Linyi officials charged him with fakes charges related to the destruction of property in a protest he didn’t attend and he has been given a two year jail sentence as a result. He has appeared in court twice and Chinese officials have prevented witnesses and his attorneys from attending both times.
"To put it mildly, China would win no medals for human rights today," Allen concluded.
