A Chinese woman testifies anonymously behind screenHuman rights activists and U.S. lawmakers are urging President Obama toraise China's one-child policy during his coming visit to Beijing. A congressional humanrights panel heard wrenching testimony on Tuesday from a Chinesewoman who was forced to abort her baby, painting a horrifying pictureof one face of the human rights situation in China.

She enteredthe hearing room wearing a black cloth over her head, and sat behind awooden screen to avoid being photographed or recorded by televisioncameras.

Using the name Wujian for the hearing, she describedwhat happened in 2004 after she became pregnant without a birth permitunder China's one-child policy.

She went into hiding, and somemonths later was picked up by Chinese family planning officials, thisafter her father was detained and beaten by authorities attempting tolocate her.

Wujian thendescribed, to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, her horror asdoctors performing the abortion first killed the baby with injections,and then cut it out of her womb.

"In the end of surgery onenurse showed me a part of the bloody foot, with tweezers, through mytears and the picture of the bloody foot engraved in my eyes andinto my heart. I clearly saw five small bloody toes," said Wujian."The body of the baby was thrown into a trashcan."

Implementedthree decades ago as a way to hold down China's exploding populationgrowth, China's one-child policy is an issue that drives members ofCongress, human rights groups, and other critics of Chinese policies toanger.

Enforced by thousands of officials in China's provinces,tens of thousands of women are estimated to have faced coerciveabortions, often late in their pregnancies, as well as forcedsterilizations.

Harry WuHarry Wu is a well-known activist for humanrights in China. "Every village, every district of the city, they havethe birth control policy," he said. "So far, we understand around 400,000 workers working in the country."

ReggieLittlejohn, who heads Women's Rights Without Frontiers, an organizationdedicated to combating forced abortion and sexual slavery in China,says Beijing would like the world to believe that it is relaxing thepolicy.

On the contrary, she says, authorities have made clearthey intend to enforce it for decades to come, which means ongoingstate-sanctioned violence against women and girls.

"When we sayforced abortion, what do we mean? We mean women being literallydragged out of their homes in the middle of the night, or even in themiddle of the day as in the case of this young woman, strapped down totables, pleading and crying and being forced to abort their babies,"said Littlejohn.

Littlejohn, and other witnesses want President Obama to raise the forced abortion issue when he meets with Chinese leaders.
 
Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ)RepublicanRepresentative Chris Smith says any weakening of America's voice wherethis and other human rights issues are concerned can only make thesituation worse.

"I'm not saying that diplomacy doesn't have avery valid place but when we whisper and put it on page four of a listof talking points, that demotion in terms of priority is felt by thereceiver, in this case the Chinese dictatorship, and then theytrivialize it say it doesn't matter," he said.

Leonard Leo, whoheads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, saysPresident Obama should use the opportunity to make clear to that untilChina eliminates policies that repress human rights, there will not beas productive a relationship as there could be on other bilateralissues.

"We all know there has been some ambiguity regarding theObama administration's treatment of human rights in the broader agendawith China," he said. "This trip by the president is an opportunity toset that record straight."

In a letter to President Obama inadvance of his departure for Asia, the Commission on InternationalReligious Freedom urges him to make a strong public statement about theimportance of human rights to the future of U.S.-China relations, andalso urges him to meet with human rights lawyers and defenders.

Jiang TianyongJiangTianyong is a human rights lawyer with the Beijing Global Law Firm, whohas defended dissidents and taken cases involving the one-child policyand along with other lawyers faced intimidation by authorities.

Hesays the one-child policy has also subjected family members of womenwho become pregnant to harassment, arrest and even torture.  

Jiangsays President Obama should elevate the issue when he visits Beijing."Mr. Obama will be visiting China very soon, and we hope he will speakout for the victims in China," he said.

Rebiya Kadeer, activistfor ethnic Uighurs in China's far northwestern autonomous Xinjiangprovince, who also testified to the panel, says her people are alsohoping or an end to the one-child policy.

"The Chinesegovernment must end its practice of forced abortion and sterilizationamong Uighur women and even men, and allow us to exercise our mostbasic rights, the right to bear children as we wish and free of statecontrol, because we are less than 1 percent of China's totalpopulation," said Kadeer.

Kadeer also had some stingingcriticism regarding the situation in Xinjiang, where authoritiesexecuted nine Uighurs in connection with riots in Urumqi earlier thisyear, saying the international community, including the United States,had been silent on the issue.  

President Obama is scheduled todepart on his Asia trip on Thursday, and the White House says he willbe raising human rights issues with China's President Hu Jintao.