NEW WORLD
POLITICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

"Open Your Mouth for the SPEECHLESS"
While trade agreements get underway between the U.S. and China, a more pressing collaboration resurfaces: American citizens and Congressmen unite to amplify China's dissident cry. REGGIE LITTLEJOHN helps us to grasp the urgent plight of the oppressed while catalyzing a heightened sensibility in the nation and the world.

BY SUZANNE LABOE

Acall for justice in China was heard in the nation's capital recently when President Hu Jintao came to negotiate business with the U.S. President and more than two dozen of America's top executives. As the head of a country that offers political asylum and personal and legal support for hundreds of Chinese dissidents and immigrants, many felt that the President should have pushed harder for an end to violent and unjust oppression of millions of China's citizens, whose most outspoken protagonists reside in the USA.
After Hu Jintao's visit, President Obama, eager to show progress toward alleviating the crippling unemployment rates, said the nations sealed deals that would mean $45 billion in U.S. exports and create roughly 235,000 jobs. The package included moves by China to expand U.S. investment and curtail theft of intellectual property. Could Hu Jintao's foreign policy, which advocates "China's peaceful development" in pursuing "soft power" in international relations, lead to a more relaxed treatment from within of the millions of political prisoners and others suffering from human rights abuses? At a press conference during the visit, Bob Fu, President of China Aid, applauded a recent call for such reform in China from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (after two years of silence), but he decried her pronouncement of China as an "equal partner" with the USA, saying, "It is time to really change course."
Exploring this question with Traces on the eve of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day is Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women's Rights without Frontiers, a non-partisan, international coalition to oppose forced abortion (there are 35,000 abortions per day) and sexual slavery in China. As an expert on China's One Child Policy, she has addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, briefed the White House, and testified before Congress.
She has also met with officials in the U.S. Department of State, the British Parliament, and the Vatican. A graduate of Yale Law School, Ms. Littlejohn is the leading voice in a growing awareness of the forcible policies at work in upholding the One Child Policy in China.

How did you transition from being a high-powered attorney to a fulltime Chinese human rights advocate?
In the mid-1990s, when I was working as an intellectual property litigator, I had my first asylum case on behalf of a woman who was mercilessly persecuted as a Christian in China, and also underwent a forced sterilization, without anesthesia, after her second child was born. Due to the lack of hygiene, she got a massive infection and has lived in chronic pain ever since. It was then that I grasped what horrific tactics were at work in enforcing the One Child Policy.
It wasn't until later that I realized I was being called to fulltime work for this cause. In 2003, I had bilateral mastectomies, further complicated by a post-operational, drug-resistant MRSA staph infection. I had many more surgeries and months of aggressive antibiotic treatments. While my life was very much in the balance, I began praying for all of those in situations worse than my own: women who were being forcibly aborted and Christians who were being tortured or even giving their lives for their faith.
God moved my heart during this time, and when I recovered He drew me to be a a voice of the voiceless in this heartbreaking cause.

So your faith as a Christian has always been in play…
Yes. Although Women's Rights without Frontiers is not a religious organization, that fact does not stop me from having my own personal faith. One of the Scriptures that has spoken deeply to me over the years is Proverbs 31:8-9, "Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy."

With the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre just passed, do you believe that the international pressure since that event has helped to improve treatment of Chinese citizens?
No. I don't believe we've seen international pressure; rather, we've seen international appeasement, and therefore the situation has grown worse. Allowing China membership into the World Trade Organization in 2001, and subsequent collaborations, have had the opposite effect we had hoped for, as the human rights situation is now de-linked from Most Favored Nation status. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created specifically to monitor Chinese human rights after China was accepted into the WTO.
Their reports very specifically detail in hundreds of pages the escalation in human rights abuses.

On January 18th, the same day that President Hu Jintao was treated to a State Dinner by President Obama, you and many others spoke at a press conference presided over by Congressman Chris Smith, the leading international human rights advocate on Capitol Hill. Did this impact on the visit's negotiations?
You never know what kind of impact such a conference will have. But President Obama did not raise the issue in any forcible way. There has been a great sense of disappointment over the decrease in support from our government. For example, it was just announced that the Voice of America Mandarin services is being cut off. The excuse given is budget cuts, yet the money that would have gone to the Mandarin services will simply go to other VOA services.
If it's not saving money, why cut the Mandarin services? Is it a coincidence that this proposed cut follows closely on the heels of the U.S. visit of President Hu Jintao? Such an action leaves the Chinese people bereft of news from around the world, and even from their own country. The BBC has also just announced that it is cutting off its Mandarin services, contributing to this news blackout.

What should President Obama do now–can he take more action on behalf of human rights yet preserve the economic boost to the U.S. that China provides?
Our government's voice is muted because of the terrific debt situation, and history has shown that we cannot count on the Obama administration to press for justice in China.

And yet there is much hope among the Chinese that America can provide some relief…
America's private citizens and organizations such as my own do not have their hands tied like our government does, and like the Chinese nationals do. As a U.S. citizen, I have freedom of speech and I feel the moral obligation to speak out as loudly as I can against human rights abuses in China, which always includes not only the "offenders" but also the incarceration and abuse of family members–even for those manifesting signs of "unauthorized" pregnancies.
And what many don't realize is that after 30 years of the One Child Policy, and the gendercide of female babies, there is now a shortage of women in China, giving rise to a tremendous business in human trafficking and sexual slavery involving girls brought in from surrounding countries.
Also, the One Child Policy is particularly oppressive for many Christians and Buddhists, who may oppose abortion on religious grounds–so forced abortion is also a violent form of religious discrimination.

Women's Rights without Frontiers is not a religious organization…
I would like to get everyone possible behind this issue without limiting it to Christians. This is the biggest women's rights issue in the world right now that affects one in every five women in the world population. Forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide represent human rights atrocities of the first order.

You were just called to New York to present at a workshop in connection with the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women. What did you bring to the table there?
The UN is funding the United Nations Family Planning Fund, or UNFPA, which was found by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to be working in collaboration with coercive family planning in China.
They are ignoring the fact that the "family planning" in effect in China is coercive birth control taking place under violent conditions. I am bringing the perspective that forced abortion is not a choice but rather a form of official government rape that is destructive physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I would like this to become a top priority of the UN who otherwise would be ignoring one-fifth of the world's female population.

What inspiration do you have in this uphill battle?
One of the most important Bible verses for me, that keeps me going, is Proverbs 24:11: "Deliver those who are drawn toward death and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, 'Surely we did not know this,' does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?" And of course, anyone who knows Jesus knows how much He loves little children, and how much these offenses must grieve His heart…

Fr. Carrón recently said, "If Christ is present, it isn't because of our words but through His signs that we can acknowledge Him."
Do you think there is the possibility for more Chinese to see His signs in such an anti-religious environment?
This may come as a surprise, but Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in China through an "unregistered" underground Church (we know this because it is being tracked by China Aid here in the USA). These people are praying for their government; they see the ways the government is grieving the Lord and they are a very positive force in China.They are lifting their nation up every day to the throne of the Most High.