The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – www.cusib.org) Advisory Board member, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers Reggie Littlejohn, joined Annette Lantos and other distinguished guests to honor victims of communism at the ceremony at the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, DC on June 12.
Reggie Littlejohn and Annette Lantos have been outspoken defenders of U.S. international broadcasting, particularly the role of radio in providing uncensored news and information to the poorest and most oppressed groups, including women in China who are victims of forced abortions, forced sterilizations and other human rights abuses.
A letter from Annette Lantos, a human rights campaigner, Chairman of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, and the widow of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, is believed to have prompted the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasts, to reverse its earlier decision to end Voice of America (VOA) programs to China and Tibet.
Reggie Littlejohn and Annette Lantos spoke during the ceremony to award the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to Donald Rumsfeld, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense.
The medal is given to individuals who have distinguished themselves in opposing communism and tyranny. Annette Lantos accepted the medal in 2008 on behalf of her husband, the late Congressman Tom Lantos. Other previous medal recipients include Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Elena Bonner, Pope John Paul II, William F. Buckley Jr., Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sen. Jesse Helms, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Steny Hoyer.
The ceremony marked the fifth anniversary of the Victims of Communism Memorial. During the 2007 dedication event, Rep. Tom Lantos joined President George W. Bush and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher as dedication speakers before an international crowd of nearly one thousand.
Dr. Lee Edwards, Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, stated that the outpouring of support by Members of Congress and the diplomatic corps during past ceremonies has been “phenomenal.” More than two dozen nations and peoples have been represented during past annual events. The memorial honors the more than 100 million victims of communism.
Congressman Andy Harris (R – MD), ambassadors and diplomats from an array of formerly communist nations, along with leaders of numerous American-based groups and representatives from the still-communist nations of Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea and captive Tibet, participated in this year’s ceremony.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Copyright 2012
Following the ceremony, a preview of the upcoming virtual Gulag exhibit for the online Global Museum on Communism was presented during a luncheon at the nearby Heritage Foundation. The online museum was launched in June 2009.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is dedicated to educating this generation and future generations about the history, philosophy and legacy of communism.
Victims of Communism Memorial, June 12, 2012
Remarks by Reggie Littlejohn, President
Women’s Rights Without FrontiersDr. Edwards and honored guests, I am greatly humbled by being asked to speak on this somber anniversary commemorating five years of the Victims of Communism Memorial. It is fitting that the Memorial statue itself is a replica of the Goddess of Democracy erected by the students on Tianamen Square – a beacon of hope for those students before they were then so brutally slaughtered by their own government.
Indeed, this is the hallmark of Communistic governments: the peacetime mass killings of their own citizens. It is estimated that the former Soviet Union under Stalin committed 20 million such killings, and that the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Tse-tung committed 65 million: together, 85 million. This number of murders of innocent civilians by their own governments boggles the mind.
And yet even this number is dwarfed by another, hidden category of victims of communism – victims of China’s One Child Policy.
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has learned that a woman in Shanxi Province, China, was forcibly aborted at seven months of pregnancy on June 3, 2012 – just last week.
Feng Jianmei was beaten and dragged into a vehicle by a group of Family Planning Officials while her husband, Deng Jiyuan, was out working. The officials asked for RMB 40,000 in fines from Feng Jianmei’s family. When they did not receive the money, they forcibly aborted Feng at seven months, laying the body of her aborted baby next to her in the bed.
Feng Jianmei is not alone. The Chinese Communist Party estimates that it has “prevented” 400 million lives through its brutal One Child Policy. Every one of these 400 million snuffed out lives is a victim of communism.
Affecting 1.3 billion people, the coercive enforcement of China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth and any other official policy in the history of the world.
Forced abortion is traumatic to women. This can happen up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Some forced abortions are so violent that the women themselves die, along with their full term babies. Forced abortion is official government rape.
Women who have violated the policy are often victims of forced sterilization, which can lead to life-long health complications. These forced abortions and forced sterilizations are often performed without anesthesia.
A document leaked out of China in November 2009 discusses methods of infanticide, including the puncturing of the skulls and injecting alcohol into the brains of full term babies, usually girls, to kill them during labor.
Because of the traditional preference for boys, sex-selective abortion of girls is common — a form of “gendercide.”
Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million more men than women in China today. This gender imbalance is a major force driving sexual slavery of women and girls in Asia.
China has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world – approximately 500 women a day. I believe this high suicide rate is related to forced abortion.
The One Child Policy is causing a slow-motion demographic disaster. Not only does the nation now suffer from a destabilizing gender imbalance, but also, there are not enough young people to sustain China’s rapidly ageing population. Why, then, does China continue this policy?
I believe that China’s One Child Policy is keeping the regime in place. It is social control, masquerading as population control. The Chinese Communist Party wields forced abortion as an instrument of terror to keep its people down. The infrastructure of population control coercion can be turned in any direction, to crush dissent. The use of a system of paid informants to identify illegally pregnant women tears at relationships of trust. If you cannot trust anyone, you cannot organize for democracy.
The true spirit of Communism is most clearly seen in the faces of the Chinese population control police as they drag women away, beat them, strap them down to tables, and force them to abort babies that they want, up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Whether China will turn and become a free, democratic nation, or whether China will continue down the path of totalitarian destruction, is the greatest issue of the twenty-first century and has vast implications for our own national security. Supporting democracy in China should be among the highest priorities of the leaders of the free world.