The Greatest Mass Murderer in History Turns 70

This week, the Chinese Communist Party commemorates 70 years of brutal, totalitarian repression of the suffering people of China.   It is fitting that the CCP has celebrated its big day October 1 with a massive military display, including the unveiling of the “Dongfeng-17,” a new, hypersonic nuclear missile believed to be capable of evading the anti-missile defenses of the U.S. and its allies and to reach U.S. targets within 30 minutes.   

The DF-17 weapon of mass destruction is consistent with the CCP’s unique status. In my opinion, the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest mass murderer in human history.  

400 million have been “prevented” through the One Child forced abortion and involuntary sterilization policy – each one a victim of communism.  In addition, tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution.  Add to this the ongoing execution of countless prisoners of conscience – including Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners — to harvest their organs for transplant, and the decimation of the Tibetan Buddhists, hundreds of whom have resorted to self-immolation to draw international attention to their plight.  

The list continues with the brutal persecution of human rights lawyers and other freedom fighters, the turning a blind eye to human trafficking and sexual slavery, the construction of a truly Orwellian surveillance state, an economy based on illegal slave labor and the theft of intellectual property.  And let us never forget the thousands of unarmed student pro-democracy protestors massacred on Tiananmen Square.  

The CCP seems locked in a race with North Korea for its place at the bottom of the human rights cesspool.   It leaves people and governments of conscience little choice but to resist with all our economic and moral might.  

Reading the most recent Congressional-Executive Commission on China report on the current state of human rights in China is like reading an indictment.  As China’s economy has grown, so has its notorious disregard of human rights:

• More than 1 million Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minorities are currently in “Political reeducation” concentration camps. 
• China exerts complete control and censorship of the media, jailing journalists who dare to tell the truth.
• Xi Jinping has been consolidating his personal power.  He essentially declared himself King, abolishing term limits so that he will remain President of China for life.
• Underground Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have undergone a tremendous persecution, with churches bulldozed, crosses torn down, pastors and priests jailed.  In April, 2016, in Henan province, a pastor’s wife, trying to protect her church from being bulldozed, was buried alive by the bulldozer. She has become a symbol of persecution in China.  
• The coercive enforcement of their population control policies is China’s war against women.  The CCP has functioned as “womb police,” declaring life or death over every pregnancy in the land.   This coercion, begun under the One Child Policy, has continued under the Two Child Policy.

This is the hallmark of Communist regimes – the peacetime killing of their own citizens. 

The two-child policy has not stopped this slaughter. The new rule is that every coupleis allowed to have two children. Therefore, it is still illegal for single women to have babies in China, and third children are still illegal. 

Girls are still selectively aborted, especially second daughters.  

And senior suicide has skyrocketed 500 percent in the past 20 years, because the One Child Policy has destroyed the family structure in China.  Elderly widows are abandoned, destitute, and at risk of suicide.

Gender imbalance exacerbated by the One Child Policy is driving human trafficking and sexual slavery.  In its June 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report, the State Department listed China as a “Tier 3” nation, one of the worst offenders in the world. Does the CCP refuse to crack down on the trafficking of women because doing so could cause an insurrection of the 37 million men who will never find wives?

What should we do?  

The fact that China is a sovereign nation and we cannot unilaterally effectuate change within its borders should not cause us to throw up our hands and do nothing. We should do what we can.

• We should utilize the Global Magnitsky Act, which authorizes the U.S. government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.   The Global Magnitsky Act should be used not only for family planning officials, but for all gross human rights offenders, who should be held publicly accountable.  Let all that has been hidden in darkness be brought to light.
• The U.S. government should remain tough in the trade war with China.  Appeasement diplomacy has never worked with China.  
• Regarding the rights of women and girls, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is the only organization in the world that has boots on the ground tosaving babies from sex-selective abortion through our “Save a Girl” Campaign.  We are also saving destitute and abandoned widows through our “Save a Widow” Campaign.

With 1.4 billion people, China holds almost one fifth of the population of the world. One in five people is suffering under the boot of this brutal, totalitarian regime.  The world will not be free until the people of China are free.

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Reggie Littlejohn is president and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers an international advocacy organization that opposes forced abortion and sexual slavery in China and champions women’s rights.