TOKYO — Japan's birthrate continues to fall, with a record low of 1.28 in 2004, according to a report released last Wednesday. The birthrate, which has been falling for decades, now ranks among the lowest in the world. It dropped 0.01 points from the previous low of 1.29 in 2003, making it the lowest recorded number of births in a year since records began there in 1899.
The country’s population will begin its decline next year, dropping from its current 128 million to 126 million by 2015, and to 101 million by 2050, bringing with it catastrophic effects. Most fear the economic repercussions.
“A nation requires a certain scale in the population to continue its momentum, but in Japan, we are confronting a serious combination of a low birthrate and an aging nation,” said deputy director of Japan's Education Ministry Kota Murase, according to a Washington Post report in March. “Our pension system is already being tested to its limits. And, with fewer young people in society, the question is: How are we going to sustain the elderly and the nation's future? We don't have a clear answer yet.”
The falling birthrate threatens to leave Japan with a labor shortage in decades to come, and will eat away at the country's tax base. It is also putting pressure on Japan's national pension fund. Demographers blame the late age of marrying and reluctance by women to forego careers and marry at all as primary reasons for the decline.
In 2004, 1,107,000 babies were born — a drop of 17,000 from 2003 statistics, and the fourth straight drop annually.
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Japan Facing Population Crisis with Baby Shortage
Forced Abortion Still A Reality in China
LONDON, England — Amnesty International, the well known human rights group, has issued its 2005 Amnesty International report which again shows China's continuing abuse of women due to the one-child policy. Successive reports indicating such abuses have, however, failed to convince the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to abandon its relationship with the Chinese population control program. They have also evidently failed to convince Canada and other nations to follow the lead of the United States and refuse funding to UNFPA based on their complicity with China's coercive abortion regime.
The Amnesty International 2005 report states that “Serious violations against women and girls continued to be reported as a result of the enforcement of the family planning policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations.” The report gives the specific example of one woman's experiences.
“Mao Hengfeng was sent to a labor camp for 18 months' 'Re-education through Labour' in April for persistently petitioning the authorities over a forced abortion 15 years earlier when she became pregnant in violation of China's family planning policy. She was reportedly tied up, suspended from the ceiling and severely beaten in the labor camp. She had been detained several times in the past in psychiatric units where she had been forced to undergo shock therapy.”
Information regarding abuses against women in China has been available for some time. The United States refuses to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) based on its U.S. Department of State investigations. Last December, Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration made a presentation to the House International Relations Committee, and stated that “UNFPA support of, and participation in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion, thus triggering the Kemp-Kasten prohibition on support to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The result has been that the United States has not funded UNFPA during the past three years.
His report also stated that “China's birth planning law and policies retain harshly coercive elements in law and practice. Forced abortion and sterilization are egregious violations of human rights, and should be of concern to the global human rights community, as well as to the Chinese themselves. Unfortunately, we have not seen willingness in other parts of the international community to stand with us on these human rights issues.”
Canada is among those “international communities” that refused to change its policies in spite of the overwhelming evidence of abuse against women. Instead, during President Bush's visit to Canada last November, Canada announced a $67 million increase (over four years) to its annual $13.1 million UNFPA contribution. According to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “UNFPA is helping improve the administration of the local family planning offices that are administering the very social compensation fee and other penalties that are effectively coercing women to have abortions.”
Canada's implicit support, through its UNFPA funding, for the Chinese government's “one-child policy” is evident despite the fact that the atrocities are well known to the government. In February of this year, a refugee claimant from China who worked as a “family-planning manager” was rejected by a Canadian court, which ruled that forcing women to abort their children against their will is a crime against humanity.
Li Min Lai admitted to aggressively enforcing the one-child policy in her workplace — at one time even camping out in front of a woman employee's home, eventually coercing her into aborting her seven-month-old unborn child.
Federal Court Justice Sandra Simpson upheld a decision by Canada's refugee board, which ruled last year that Lai's role in coercing abortion contravened the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
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(This update courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
