A Blind Man Sees What Others Cannot — The Evil of China’s ‘One Child Only’ Policy

Chen Guangcheng is blind, but the 34-year-old activist is taking on the Chinese government’s “one child only” policy. This man sees what others cannot or will not — the true horror of the Chinese government’s anti-human policy. He is organizging Chinese peasants in a brave effort to mount a legal challenge to the government’s policy.

The Washington Post reports on Guangcheng’s crusade in Saturday’s edition. Here’s how the paper introduces his effort: Since March, the farmers said, local authorities had been raiding the homes of families with two children and demanding at least one parent be sterilized. Women pregnant with a third child were forced to have abortions. And if people tried to hide, the officials jailed their relatives and neighbors, beating them and holding them hostage until the fugitives turned themselves in.

Chen, 34, a slender man wearing dark sunglasses, held out a digital voice recorder and listened intently. Blind since birth, he couldn’t see the tears of the women forced to terminate pregnancies seven or eight months along, or the blank stares of the men who said they submitted to vasectomies to save family members from torture. But he could hear the pain and anger in their voices and said he was determined to do something about it.

READ THE FULL STORY: Philip P. Pan, “Who Controls the Family? Blind Activist Leads Peasants in Legal Challenge to Abuses of China’s Population-Growth Policy,” The Washington Post, Saturday, August 27, 2005.