Baby Crushed, Killed During China’s One-Child Policy Enforcement

A 13-month-old baby was crushed to death under a car containing family planning officials in Dongshantou Village near Wenshou City. Eleven officials were attempting to collect a fine from a couple who had allegedly violated China’s One-Child Policy.

According to a China Daily report, the discussion became heated between the officials and the boy’s parents. The officials persuaded the child’s mother to accompany them back to nearby Ruian to discuss options, and the boy was placed in the care of his father. The family planning officials got into their cars to return to Ruian. The baby was found crushed beneath one of the cars containing family planning officials. 

How the baby ended up under the wheel of the vehicle has been unclear; but the baby’s father, Chen Li has stepped forward to tell what happened in an interview published by the local Xian Dai Jin Bao News Agency: 

“At noon on Feb. 4, as we were having lunch upstairs, we heard people talking downstairs. When we got downstairs, we saw several people rushing into our room, saying that they are leaders of Qing Xiang Community, who are coming to collect the ‘Social Compensation Fee.’ I brought chairs for them, but they refused to sit down and talk. They also threatened me, saying ‘Don’t you flee today. Today we are definitely bringing you back.’ 

“When we get out of my house, they were still dragging my clothes. I said, ‘You have torn my clothes.’ They said, ‘We will reimburse you for the clothes, but you have to go with us today.’ I said, ‘I will go, but I have three children. My family wants to go together with me.’ 

“When we left the house, my wife was already in the vehicle. There were many neighbors around the vehicle. My two daughters were standing by the car door. My elder daughter was holding her baby brother, and the baby was crying for his mother. Then I went over to the vehicle, carrying the baby, preparing to go into the vehicle. At that moment there were seven or eight government officials inside the vehicle, and my wife was also inside.

‘I wanted to get into the car and handed my son to my wife. The baby was crying a lot, and it was very chaotic. I don’t know who pushed me, causing my baby to drop to the ground. At that time the car started moving, and I wasn’t able to get my baby before the tire crushed him. The baby was killed.” 

According to a BBC news report, thousands of furious villagers protested the death of this baby outside the local government offices; and Xinhua has reported that the van driver and the Communist Party Secretary have been arrested, though it is unclear whether they have been charged. 

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated, “Our hearts break to learn of the violent death of an innocent child, and we extend our deepest sympathy to his parents. Those responsible for this violent death must be held accountable.

“Too often, under the glare of international scrutiny, the Chinese Communist Party will arrest officials who have committed a heinous human rights violation,” she continued. “Then as soon as the attention of the world shifts away, these same officials are restored to their former positions or even promoted.” 

Littlejohn compared the incident in Dongshantou village with other cases of violent death at the hands of family planning officials, discussed in a report WRWF submitted into the Congressional Record at a hearing on Sept. 22, 2011. Case Seven of this report gives the account of a couple with a second child in Henan Province. Family planning police smashed the father in the head with a bottle. He is now permanently disabled. In Case Twelve, in Jiangsu Province, family planning officials beat a farmer to death because his son was suspected of having an extra child. 

In April of 2011, in Linyi County, Shandong Province, a family planning official murdered a man. They had come to seize his sister for a forced sterilization. Failing to find her, they started to beat their father. When the man defended his father, one of the family planning officials plunged a knife in his heart, and he died.

“Most often, family planning officials are not prosecuted for their crimes, but act with impunity,” Littlejohn said. “The spirit of the Red Guard lives on in the Family Planning Police, who too often function as domestic terrorists. There is a growing consensus both inside and outside China that the One Child Policy is no longer needed to control the population. China’s population problem is not that it has too many people, but that it has too few young people. This ‘senior tsunami’ that is about to hit China is a slow-motion demographic disaster. The One Child Policy simply makes no demographic sense. 

“Why, then, does the Chinese Communist Party insist on keeping this policy? In my opinion, the One Child Policy is the glue that is keeping the Chinese Communist Party in place. The purpose of the policy is to instill terror in order to repress people under the iron fist of this totalitarian regime. It is social control, masquerading as population control.” 

Littlejohn points out that on Jan. 14, Wang Xia, chairman of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, stated, “We must unwaveringly adhere to the One Child Policy as a national policy to stabilize the low birth rate as the primary task.” Littlejohn concludes, “The Chinese Communist Party has no intention of ending coercive family planning any time soon. But the voices of the Chinese people are getting stronger and stronger in protest against this violent totalitarianism.”