How the population control movement achieves its goals

COERCIVE POLICIES

Under the guise of handing out rights and responsibilities to women, the UN and other Western-run agencies are imposing their own population agenda on third world societies. If parents choose to have fewer children there will be plenty of contraceptives on hand to help them. But if they choose to have more children, they are rather less likely to receive encouragement. In many Third World societies, children are a matter of life or death. 

In the absence of any welfare provision or pension plans, parents have large families to try to ensure some security when they are too old to work. Having children in this context is not seen as a choice at all, but as the difference between starving and not starving. The only way to improve things for women in the third world is to address the problem of poverty, not of population. But that issue is not even on the agenda today, as demands to reduce the numbers of births dominate the international discussion.  

Back in the seventies, rumours abounded that coercive family planning projects bribed people with transistor radios and even cans of Coca-Cola to undergo sterilisation. These days the population lobby has distanced itself from that coercive image. But health projects still blackmail women in the Third World, bombarding them with the message that it is their right to make the responsible choice to limit their family size. These rights and choices turn out to be worth less than cheap radios and Coke.

Rights are granted on the understanding that people live according to the Western agenda on population. This was once known as coercion. In the name of human rights and women's emancipation, Third World peoples are being pressed to accept the notion that they are a threat to civilisation on earth. Population projects are a diversion to settle the minds of those who rule the West. They have nothing to do with solving the problems of the Third World.

Remember - Just because contraceptives are available, it does not mean people will use them, or engage in family planning. Herein lies the problem for the population controllers.

Example - A popular population controller named Kingsley Davis acknowledged this above fact when he quoted in 1967:

"Suppose a woman does not want to use any type of contraceptive until after she has had four children. Her attitude is due to ignorance and cultural values and the policy deemed necessary to change it is anti-natalist propaganda."

The conditions that cause births to be wanted or unwanted are beyond the control of family planning. The social structure and economy must be changed before a deliberate reduction in the birth rate can be achieved."

Methods used to promote population control

• Changing culture and values
• Use/abuse of the media
• "Sticks and carrots"
• "Piggy backing"

CULTURE VULTURES

Remember - Large families are a source of pride as well as an economic necessity in the Third World.

"For a Zimbabwean woman, bearing and rearing children is the primary source of status in the family and community. The larger number of children she has the higher status she enjoys." Sally Mugabe, Popline, June 1987

An anti-population gathering took place in Zimbabwe in which an African leader began a speech about the dangers of overpopulation. "My people, our birth rate is so high, our numbers will double in 25 years...." he began. Unfortunately the rest of the speech is unrecorded. When the audience heard that the population was growing they drowned out his speech with applauding and cheering.

This a major problem for the population controllers. "Africa is culturally, historically and socio-economically different. What is needed here is to change cultural attitudes to family size. Here it is not a question of strengthening demand but literally to create demand for a commodity which is culturally unacceptable at all levels of the community." Rousdi A. Henim, Population Control, 1985

"We need to, first, ensure that men and women desire smaller families." Barber Conable, President of the World Bank

STERILISATION WITHOUT CONSENT

Sterilisation is a surgical procedure that leaves a man or woman unable to have children. In men this is called a vasectomy and in women it is tubal ligation or ‘tying of tubes’. A hysterectomy will also leave a woman sterile but sometimes this is a necessary medical procedure but best avoided if at all possible until a woman has had children. Occasionally vasectomy or tubal ligation can be reversed but this is not always successful.

The Nazis brought in eugenics regulations in 1934 which were used to forcibly sterilise people. Many of us had thought that these horrific deeds of the Nazis were long confined to history but unfortunately recent reports in the media have brought to the attention of the world the fact that forced sterilisation without consent is still happening in 2010.

In Nambia three women are suing the state for allegedly being sterilised without their informed consent after being diagnosed as HIV positive with another 15 alleged cases (3). In Uzbekistan from 2003 to the current day tens of thousands of women are alleged to have been sterilised without consent. In some cases this was performed after birth by caesarean section and the women were unaware that they had been sterilised (4). Even in Glasgow this year a woman alleges that she was offered £200 to be sterilised in a program seemingly targeted at drug addicts (5). In China sterilisation has continued unabated over the past 30 years and is currently ongoing (6).

In Peru in the 1990s 250,000 women from poor areas were allegedly sterilised without consent (7).

In other countries enforced sterilisation, incredibly, had continued long after the Nazis. In Japan 16,000 disabled people were sterilised between 1949 and 1995. In similar circumstances Finland sterilised 11,000 people over many years and Australia 1000 people in the 1990s. Many other countries such as Canada, Norway, Switzerland, France, Austria, Czech Republic and Sweden had similar schemes. The Czech Republic illegally sterilised Roma women. America sterilised those declared ‘insane’ for many years in the early part of the 20th century (8) (9).

(1) http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/eurold/article/0028-2243(90)90163-U/abstract

(2) http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/vasectomy_safety.cfm

(3) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/10202429.stm

(4) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7107200.ece

(5) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/10143746.stm

(6) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7099417.ece

(7) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/239406.stm

(8) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/analysis/40052.stm

(9) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8375960.stm

Here are some more examples of recent sterilisation scandals:

• A Human Rights Report in 1997 alleged that 1,000 disabled girls and young women were illegally sterilised in Australia in the previous six years. Click here to read more

• The Czech government illegally sterilised Roma women as recently as 2003. Click here to read more

• In April 2010, the Times Online reported that doctors in Southern China were working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Click here to read more

• According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan. Click here to read more

• On the 8th November 2011 the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment on the V. C. v. Slovakia case (no. 18968/07), founding a violation of article 3 and 8 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment and right to respect for private and family life) of the Convention and considering that it is not necessary to examine separately the complaint under article 12 (right to marry and to found a family) of the Convention. Read more on the story here of how Romanian women and French women were sterilised without their consent

 

MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

Remember - the media is used by population control protaganists to break down cultural opposition to fertility control.

Example - Jamaica- The Radio soap opera, Naisberg Street, supported by the local I.P.P.F. affiliate, used a family planning clinic as the location of some situations.

Example - India - Family planning was promoted in Humbeg an Indian soap opera.

Example - Nigeria - Elizabeth O Karo, a TV producer working in conjunction with a population control advocate, had produced a variety show with family planning skits which helped to triple attendance at local family planning clinics.

Example - Nigeria - In 1986 the U.S. Agency of International Development forwarded $30 million to African Family Planning agencies to launch a campaign of "significant and substantial" communication using "culturally" appropriate messages to increase the "level of requests for services" at family planning clinics. Such methods used 3,000 radio, TV, film and folk media programmes. By December 21st 1992 80% of the population in the sub-sahara area were using modern contraception. AID 1992

Indian postage stamp promoting population control

STICKS AND CARROTS

Remember - Population controllers realised long ago that they would have intractable problems if they maintained their "freedom of choice" stance in the face of people choosing large families. Therefore they devised a system of incentives and disincentives.

"In Vietnam a woman receives 20kg of rice and two weeks holiday if an I.U.D. is inserted; 1,000kg or rice and lighter duties at work for a sterilisation" Jouchim Weller, People, 1989

"In Bangladesh "acceptors" of sterilisation receive 175 taka, the equivalent of a weeks wages for a rural labourer. In addition, female patients receive a sari and men a lungi." John Clevland and W. Parker Manilan, Studies in Family Planning, February 1991

"In Bali, Indonesia, "village meetings" are called which begins with a roll call. Each man responds by indicating whether he and his wife are using contraceptives. The replies are prominently displayed on a map. The villages with the highest number of users receives rewards from the government such as food supplements and a clean water supply. If they don't, it is blamed on the couple who do not contracept." World Bank Development Report 1980.

It was announced in March 2011, that the Rawandan government plans to carry out vasectomies on 700,000 men over three years. Critics said the plan was targetted at the poor though the government denied this. It is not clear if reducing the population was a condition of receiving aid to help rebuild the country after the devastating civil war. It possibly was. This tactic has been used many times with regard to aid for third world countries.

PIGGY-BACKING

What do population controllers do when a certain people truly reject their aims?

Remember - One very effective answer is to link it to something the people in question really need.

"In communities where there is no apparent demand for family planning, it can be introduced jointly with services in greater demand." Population change and Economic Development, World Bank Report

Example - A trial was carried out by UNFPA and USAID in Bangladesh. Family planning had been made part of a healthcare project which also provided oral rehydration treatment to mothers whose babies were suffering from diarrhoea. As diarrhoea is a major cause of infant mortality in the Third World, the offer of this treatment would have been a very strong incentive to use the family planning clinic. In order for a woman to receive this medicine for her child she must first accept the contraceptive devices. 

Example - It was reported on the BBC on 1st July 2011 that health officials in the Indian state of Rajasthan launched a new campaign in an effort to reduce the population growth in the area. They encouraged men and women to volunteer for sterilisation, and in return offered a car and other prizes for those who come forward.

Sitaram Sharma, the head doctor of Jhunjunu in western India, is hopeful that the chance to win a car might be just enough to tempt at least 20,000 men and women to undergo sterilisation. He is also offering motorcycles, televisions and food blenders.

The offer is open to all Indians and not just residents of his drought-prone region. Other regions have also offered incentives for couples volunteering for sterilisation. A nationwide campaign was abandoned in the 1970s, however, after complaints that thousands of men and women were forced into having the operation.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13982031