Chinese Baby Killers
Photographs change history. Images of the screaming Vietnamese girl, burned naked by napalm, the emaciated Muslim man caged behind Serbian barbed wire, and the burqa-clad women shot in the head in an Afghan stadium by the Taliban burned graphic and indelible images in the public conscience. Soon after they were taken, American support for the Vietnam War collapsed, the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia began, and the American public, already enraged by Taliban support for al Qaida, firmed its support of the Afghanistan invasion.
China now has its picture that could change its history: the image of a grieving mother in a hospital bed, her dead infant lying by her side. It is already one the most downloaded items on the Chinese Internet.
This photograph crushes the carefully cultivated image of a benign and wise Chinese state, offering its people jobs, rising living standards, and eventual happiness. Instead, it offers a rare glimpse of the naked power that the Chinese communist state stands prepared to use against its own citizens. We have heard of Chinese state infanticide for years, but we have never seen it before. Now we have.
posted by Michael at
4:14 PM
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