Ordinary stories...

Interview of Piero VERNI

to CHOEKYI (45 years)

Born in Amdo, village name withheld for security reason to her family members.

I was around 37 years old when I gave birth to my fourth son. My husband and I have always wanted a daughterbut this dream remained unfulfilled due to Chinese force. According to Chinese Law of that time, we cannot have more than three children. So no sooner they learnt of my fourth delivery, one afternoon, they came to my house and took me to the Hospital and sterilized against my will.

Something was not done well perhaps because I bleeded a lot. After three days of hospitalization it was impossible to remain there because, although sterilization was forced upon me, my family must bear all the expenses. I am a poor peasant's wife and I cannot afford it. In the hospital specially in the ladies toilet, I have seen blood and embryos. There are girls of 20 years who have been forced to sterilized. Out of around 120 women in my village, between 70 to 80 have been sterilized. I have witnessed in my village that some women who were forced to undergo abortion after one child, for some unforseen reasons, both natural and mishaps, lose their only child but remain unproductive and extremely lonely and sad.

There are cases where at times, the Chinese hospitals do not use anaesthesia on women. These women suffer pain extremely. There are cases of pregnant women aborted for two to three months as well as five months where you could see the hands and legs grown of these children. Two women died due to being aborted at highly risky stage. One is 33 years old and one in twenties. The problem with these forced abortion is majority of these women are extremly poor. Neither they can afford to pay hospitals nor they can go back to work immediately after to meet the ends meet. There are not a single women left above 20 who were not being sterilized. The other problem is most of men in my part of village were gradually killed by Chinese when our men revolted against Chinese occupation of Tibet and when not much men were left, many of tibetan women marries chinese men specially chinese muslim who are our neighbour.