Chinese state holds parents hostage in sterilisation driveHundreds of senior citizens have been held captive in Chinese government offices as part of a campaign by family planning officials to force their children to submit to sterilisation.
The elderly people are parents of children suspected of flouting strict family planning rules in the southern Chinese city of Puning. According to the Nanfang Rural News, the local government has drawn up a list of nearly 10,000 people who are suspected of planning to have a second or third child. Around half that group has agreed to comply with sterilisation.
The 1,377 detained people include some of those who have so far refused, but mostly consist of their parents. Witnesses said that they were being held in cramped, damp conditions, including one group of 200 which had been herded into a hundred-square-metre room. "The room was too small for all the people to lie down and sleep," the Nanfang Rural News said. "The young ones had to stand or squat." The detainees are being lectured on family planning rules.
If citizens believe they have a right to health care and jobs provide by China, then they should not object if China exercises its sovereign right to control every aspect of a citizens lives.