Wednesday 19 March 2014

Female Infanticide the worst Epidemic so far...

India and China... two most populous countries... two arch rivals.... two super powers of the so called third world...every year countless money has been spent in the defense sector to confront each other but deep down both the countries are fatally affected by an epidemic.... no its not AIDS.... not even cancer... its female foeticide and female infanticide. Enough has been written about the foeticide and decreasing sex ratio of India. But the picture is equally serious in China too.

The tradition of killing female infants is very old in China may be thousands of year old. Various travelogue of christian Missionaries have confirmed this. There is Chinese word  called Ni nu... which means drowning girls. Babies are simply drowned in most cases by their mothers. If the woman hesitates to do so she is forced to do so by her husband, in laws even by her parents... the baby is drowned in the sink full of blood and water.... if the mother fails to do this heinous crime the mid wives would do it. The baby is immersed in water and is being hold forcefully until she stopes moving..... nightmarish isn't it. D.E. Mungello had written a book on this in 2008 called " Drowning Girls of China". Frankly speaking I don't have the guts to read it........ I'm too terrified.     

By the way there are/ were other technics too... like starvation ....like putting pressure in the appropriate places so  that the infant suffocates to death, mostly performed by the mid wives.... technics  like  exposing the baby to elements.. by placing it in a basket and by hanging the basket from a tree.... the baby shouts but nobody pays attention not even the passerby.. eventually the baby starves to death... though I doubt whether its practiced any more (source Google and Wikipedia).

In order to restrain the high growth of population the Chinese Government declared the famous/ infamous " One Couple One Child Policy" on 25th September 1980... it only added fuel to the fire... the aftermath was nothing but a genocide... watching the dreaded  sex ratio the Government finally amended the policy in 1984 by allowing those couple who have a female first borne to have another issue. This was practically of very little help.

In the Twenty First century the Chinese Government set up few baby hatches... a baby hatch is a place where unwilling couple may abandon their child that too anonimously. They are to drop the baby in a basket and ring a bell. After ten minutes the trained medical staff of that hatch come out and pick the baby up. Abandoned babies receives proper care and medical attention. Currently there are around 25 such hatches. It will be 75 within a few years.An article in the Times of India caught my eyes couple of days ago.. it says that the such an hatch was shut down by the authorities. Because 262 babies were dumped within a few weeks. The hatch was opened in the end of January 2014 by the way.

Scary or what??????????

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