Advocate Who Challenged China's One-Child Policy Faces Trial

Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng on July 17 is scheduled to go to trial in Linyi, China, county court in the country's Shandong province, his attorney Li Jinsong said last week, Agence France-Presse reports. Chen is scheduled to face charges of "willfully harming public property" and "gathering masses to disturb traffic order" after attempting to expose alleged human rights abuses associated with the enforcement of the country's one-child-per-family policy (Agence France-Presse, 7/10). The one-child policy seeks to keep China's population -- now 1.3 billion -- at around 1.7 billion by 2050. Ethnic minorities and farmers are the only groups legally exempt from the rule. Chen, who is blind, recorded testimony from men and women in communities in and around Linyi, who have experienced forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as had family members captured and tortured after they tried to hide or run from authorities. He was attempting to bring a class-action lawsuit against the Chinese government for alleged human rights abuses associated with the enforcement. Chen in September 2005 was placed under house arrest for speaking with journalists, government officials and other advocates about the one-child policy (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 6/27). Chen's trial might renew international scrutiny of the policy, and "it represents a major setback for reformers in the government who have been trying to soften the one-child policy and eliminate the abuses long associated with it," the Washington Post reports. The U.N. Population Fund has raised Chen's case with the Chinese government several times, and senior U.S. officials also have urged the government to release him, according to the Post (Pan, Washington Post, 7/8).

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