Chen Guang Cheng

EDM number 586 in 2006-07, proposed by David Taylor on 09/01/2007.

That this House notes the four years and three months' imprisonment of 34 year old Chen Guang Cheng, a blind Chinese human rights activist; notes his crime consisted of acting on behalf of women being forcibly aborted and sterilised; notes that 130,000 women undergo forcible abortions per year as part of the coercive one-child policy; notes that Cheng, a self-taught lawyer, acting for two women whose babies were forcibly aborted only days before birth, approached the State Family Planning Commission asking them to halt such outrages; notes that in response he was placed under house arrest for three months during which he and his wife were persistently threatened by hired thugs; notes that nonetheless he succeeded in bringing the case before the Beijing courts; notes that this failed and Cheng was subsequently imprisoned for trumped up charges of damaging public property and organising villages to disrupt traffic; notes that his attorneys were detained and prevented from appearing and that neither witnesses nor evidence were presented for the defence; notes with shame that the Chinese policy is supported with British taxpayers' money through government grants made to the UNFPA, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International, all of which finance Chinese family planning yet have failed in 20 years to change the policy of coercive abortion and sterilisation; and calls on the Government to cancel all grants to groups providing money to countries with coercive family planning policies as well as demanding that Mr Cheng be released from prison without delay.

This motion has been signed by a total of 135 MPs, 3 of these signatures have been withdrawn.