Lid Lifted on Foetus Police
Herald sun, Friday, June 12, 1998 - by HARRY DUNPHY in Washington
Duel Life: Gao Xiao Duan weeps at the hearingA FORMER head of Chinese population control office yesterday told of forced abortions and destruction of the homes of women suspected of illegal pregnancies.
Gao Xiao Duan also said her office paid informants to report unauthorised pregnancies of neighbors, relatives and friends.
Ms Gao, who ran a birth control office in Fujian province from 1994 to 1998, provided extensive details on China’s one-child policy. Ms Gao fled China for the US in April.
"Women are rounded up, held in population Jail cells and forced and coerced to submit to the killing of their children," she said of state abortions.
If a team failed to apprehend a known female violator, "they catch her husband, brother and/or parents and detain them to force the woman into surrendering herself".
"I did so many brutal things," Ms Gao said. "I was a monster in the daytime, injuring others by carrying out the Chinese communist authorities’ barbaric planned birth policy."
"But in the evening I enjoyed my life with my children. I could not live such a dual life any more."
Ms Gao was speaking at a House of Representatives’ international relations subcommittee hearing called by Republicans to pressure China before President Bill Clinton’s visit to Beijing from June 25.
The House has passed Bills that ban Chinese products made by slave labor and US travel by officials who engage in religious persecution or forced abortions. Senate action is pending. -AP