Chen Guang Cheng

EDM number 161 in 2007-08, proposed by David Taylor on 08/11/2007.
Categorised under the topics of Asia, Health services, Human rights and Medical ethics.

That this House notes the four years and three months' imprisonment of 34 year old Chen Guang Cheng, a blind Chinese human rights activist; further notes his crime consisted of acting on behalf of women undergoing forcible abortions and sterilisations; further notes that 130,000 women undergo forcible abortions per year as part of the coercive one-child policy; further notes that after Cheng's case failed in the Beijing courts he was subsequently imprisoned on trumped up charges of damaging public property and organising villagers to disrupt traffic; further notes that his attorneys were detained and prevented from appearing and that neither witnesses nor evidence were presented for the defence; further notes the detention in September by Chinese police of Yuan Weijing, the wife of Chen Guang Cheng, to prevent her from going to the Philippines to collect a human rights award on his behalf for his `irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law'; further notes with shame that the Chinese policy is supported with British taxpayers' money through government grants made to the United Nations Population Fund, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International, all of which finance Chinese family planning yet have failed in 20 years to change the policy of coercive abortion and sterilisation; and calls on the Government to cancel all grants to groups providing money to countries with coercive family planning policies as well as demanding that Mr Cheng be released from prison without delay.

This motion has been signed by a total of 156 MPs, 4 of these signatures have been withdrawn.