China must work on human rights

As the president of a superpower nation that has made great strides to overcome and rectify its own history of human-rights horrors, Bush indeed has a responsibility to point out that China must stop its medieval practices of torturing and persecuting its citizens.

In February of this year, in "cleansing" preparation for the Olympics, Pastor Hua Huiqi was imprisoned inside his Beijing home when police welded shut all openings from the outside. Later, he was forcibly evicted and has been essentially homeless. This is because he refused to register his church with the Three Self-Patriotic Movement, the official governmental body that a congregation must belong to in order to avoid persecution, which includes prison sentences, slave labor, beatings, torture. Additional persecution is delivered upon the spouse and children of the imprisoned, including difficulty keeping employment, police harassment, beatings, etc.

Pastor Hua is now at large, having escaped after attempting to attend a registered church in Kuanjie, which President Bush attended while in China. Scores of religious and political dissenters are, as you read this, imprisoned in horrific conditions.

Pro-choice Americans should be greatly disturbed that in China, women who are pregnant with their second child have only two inadequate choices. They must pay a hefty, yearly fine in order to keep the baby, or have the baby aborted. Untold numbers of Chinese parents have been forced to end their child's life because they couldn't afford the fine.

The Olympics focused the world's eyes on China. It has opened its economic doors to capitalism, the result being greatly improved financial lives of millions of citizens who formerly lived in poverty. If China will open its philosophic doors to normal, human compassion, its people will have the opportunity to truly live.

Rebekah J. Towers

Carpentersville