(LifeSiteNews.com) – A farmer and father of four in southwest
China's Guizhou province killed himself after family planning officials
fined him the equivalent of almost 3,500 USD when he tried to enroll his
children in school, according to British news sources.
Wang Guangrong, 37, had defied the country’s harsh
one-child-policy regime, which, though less strictly enforced in poor
rural areas, still imposes often-impossible financial penalties, and
forced abortion or sterilization.
Wang's widow told the Daily Express that as they were unable to
pay the fine, her husband decided to kill himself in hopes of forcing
local authorities into paying his family compensation.
"He couldn't take it," said his widow, Wu Jinmin, 36, according to
the paper. "He said to me before he cut his wrists, 'What did we bring
them into the world for, to be as dumb as cattle? I cannot see my
children grow up uneducated.'"
Daily Express reports that out of embarrassment local officials
have since given the family the equivalent of 34,000 USD, and have said
they will provide them a new house.
"I wish my husband were still with me, but I think he would be
happy where he is knowing that our family will be educated after all,
even if we are not," Wu said. "[Authorities] said after his death that
extra births, although not encouraged, should not stop the children
being educated."
"The children miss him the most. They are all very sad," she added.”
Reggie Littlejohn of Women's Rights Without Frontiers said that
suicide in China due to the one-child policy is both rampant and poorly
understood by most westerners.
"People in the west are sometimes told that people in China are
free to have more children if they are willing to pay a fine,"
Littlejohn told LifeSiteNews.
"What they are not told is that this fine can be ten times a
person’s annual salary – or even more. The vast majority of people
cannot afford to pay these crushing fines on an emergency basis to
maintain a pregnancy.”
"If a couple cannot pay this fine, they may be subject to forced abortion...
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