Chinese family planning officials ran over a 13-month old baby with a small bus after they feuded with a Chinese resident over fines related to the birth of the child, born outside China’s one-child policy.
The China Daily publication indicates police in East China’s Zhejiang province are investigating the death of the baby.
The 13-month-old boy, the third child of a couple in Mayu Town, Rui’an City, was run over on Monday by a minibus owned by the Mayu government and died in hospital, a Rui’an municipal government official said.
In China, a family planning policy has been strictly implemented to rein in the nation’s surging population by encouraging late marriages and pregnancies, as well as limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children, if the first is a girl.
Eleven officials from Qingxiang Community of the town were attempting to persuade the couple, Chen Liandi and Li Yuhong, to pay the fines for their third child at noon on Monday and were confronted by Chen, the official said.
They asked Li to follow them to the township government for further discussion, he said.
Chen was holding the baby as the minibus’s engine was started, according to the official.
Chen said his wife was going to be taken to the township government and required to pay more than 30,000 yuan (4,773 U.S. dollars) in fines or she would be detained. The baby boy dropped to the ground in the tussle with the officials when he tried to stop his wife from leaving.
The minibus started suddenly and he was too late to pull his baby from its path, the father said.
Despite some reports claiming China may relax or even do away with its brutal one-child policy, that results in forced abortions, coercive sterilizations and other human rights abuses, Chinese officials are renewing its commitment to it.
In January, a top family planning official dashed hopes that the one-child policy will be abolished or modified slightly any time soon.
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“We must unwaveringly adhere to the One Child Policy as a national policy to stabilize the low birth rate as the primary task,” stated Wang Xia, Chairman the National Population and Family Planning Commission, at a national conference on January 14. “We need to keep the One-child policy and keep the national birth rate low . . . It’s our priority.”
Reggie Littlejohn, a U.S.-based human rights campaigner whose group Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has taken the one-child policy head on, informed LifeNews of the comments today.
She said Chinese national media quoted expert opinions that “the current low birthrate is not stable, except for a few very advanced major cities.”
