Campaigners ask UK to speak up about China's one-child policy
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has condemned the failure of the UK Foreign Office to recognise the human rights abuses of China's one-child policy. Speaking after an evidence session of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a SPUC political spokesman said yesterday: "It is an outrage that the Foreign Office's 2001 Human Rights Report gives not one single mention of the gross violations of human rights integral to China's one-child policy." He said: "Amnesty International and the US State Department have frequently documented China's system of forced abortions and infanticide, yet the Foreign Office has ignored this irrefutable evidence. Tonight foreign office minister Peter Hain said that 'the right to life is the most basic human right' and claimed that Britain had created 'a critical dialogue' with China on 'children's and women's rights'. Yet the British government continues to act as an apologist for bodies complicit in China's coercive population control programme, such as the United Nations Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation."