die soon in prison because of reported torture.
Jubilee Campaign USA, a leading Christian rights group, said it had urged supporters to write to Chinese ambassadors in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia after learning that Chen was "beaten" in recent weeks as he wants to appeal against his sentence and refuses to shave his head.
It cited a report by human right group Amnesty International (AI) which claimed there were reasons to "fear for his life" amid expected "further torture and ill-treatment."
Chen, 35, told his wife he was being punished for "being disobedient" due to his insistence on filing an appeal to the provincial higher court. After he also refused to have his head shaved, "six other prisoners had pushed him to the floor, encouraged by prison guards, and hit and kicked him hard," AI quoted his wife as saying. Medical treatment was also withheld from him, the group said.
The self-taught Chinese lawyer was first taken into policy custody in September 2005, after exposing what rights watchers described as "China’s brutal population control tactics," including forced late-term abortions and forced sterilizations, in Shandong Province.
NO TRIAL
"For months Chen was held without trial, subjected to beatings, and denied contact with his lawyer, his wife, and other advocates," Jubilee Campaign USA told BosNewsLife in a statement.
On August 24, 2006, Chen was formally sentenced to serve four years and three months in
prison for "damaging public property and gathering people to block traffic," during a demonstration.
A Shandong court later upheld the verdict after an appeals court ordered a retrial, but Chen maintained the charges were trumped up after he exposed family planning abuses.
Chen reportedly met hundreds of women who had been forced to have late term abortions or were forcibly sterilized. Because of "violent birth control practices and brutal abuses of women," Chen compiled evidence, recorded witness testimonies, and filed a class-action suit "on behalf of these innocent victims," said Anna Buwalda, the director of Jubilee Campaign USA.
"China is the only country in the world where it is illegal to have a brother or sister. For more then 27 years, China has brutally enforced its compulsory one child policy," Buwalda told BosNewsLife in an earlier statement.
POLICY CONTINUES
Chinese authorities have denied human rights abuses but proclaimed they would continue the
one child policy, which limits couples to having one child, through the 2006-2010 five year planning period.
China’s one child policy was established by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to limit Communist China’s population growth. Although designated a "temporary measure," it continues a quarter-century after its establishment.
Experts say the rule has been estimated to have reduced population growth in the country of 1.3 billion by as much as 300 million people over its first twenty years.
However rights watchers, including evangelical Christians and both secular and religious groups, say the rule has caused a disdain for female infants. Draconian family planning reportedly resulted in the disparate ratio of 114 males for every 100 females among babies.
Normally, 105 males are naturally born for every 100 females, according to experts. (With reporting from China and BosNewsLife Research).
