November 28, 2009

The Catholic Church has reported that they will deny communion to any Spanish member of parliament that votes in favor of a bill that makes abortion more readily available. The bill allows abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy, will allow abortion at any time in the pregnancy in cases of extreme fetal deformity, and will allow girls that are sixteen and older to obtain an abortion without parental consent. Currently, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, if the fetus is malformed, or if the pregnancy endangers the physical or mental health of the mother. A spokesman for Spain's Bishops' Conference said, "This is a warning to Catholics, that they can't vote in favour of this and that they won't be able to receive communion unless they ask forgiveness. They are in an objective state of sin." (Full Story) [As a side note, the title of the linked article is the most convoluted, confusing title ever. Get some editors on that, stat!]
The Catholic Church using it's power to scare people into doing what the Church wants, or they will be punished? This has never happened before.

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A state-run magazine in China published an expose on China's secret detention centers. These detention centers, sometimes known as "black jails", are used to prevent citizens from complaining about the Chinese government. These petitioners come to Beijing to report grievances, many of them involving corruption in their hometowns. There are as many as 10,000 "retrievers" or "interceptors" who are paid by local officials to keep petitioners from filing their complaints. These interceptors often roam the streets of Beijing and grab petitioners off the street. The petitioners are then taken away to a secret detention center -- sometimes its guesthouses or dank basements. The petitioners have their cellphones and identification confiscated before being locked up. They are usually held for days or weeks and are inadequately fed, and sometimes beaten. Then they are sent back to their hometown with the warning that they stay away from the capital. These detention centers are used to scare petitioners out of filing their complaints. The report counted 73 secret detention centers, and many are run by regional governments.
"Although the right to petition the authorities is enshrined in the Constitution, that right is frequently swallowed up by the reality of contemporary China's system of governance: local officials, facing pressure to maintain social stability, are penalized for allowing too many complaints to find their way to the offices of the central government."
It was surprising for many that a state-run magazine could publish such an expose. Especially since a Foreign Ministry spokesman denied the existence of "black jails" just a few weeks ago (after a Human Rights Watch report documented China's secret jails). Human rights advocates express guarded optimism about the publishing of this expose. As one researcher from Human Rights Watch said, "The fact that the report focuses on the issue in a substantive and detailed way gives us hope that the Chinese government might end its longtime denial of the existence of black jails and move toward closing them down, liberating the detainees, and bringing the perpetrators to justice." (Full Story)
It does seem a little suspicious that this state-run magazine was able to publish this expose. The Chinese government has very tight control over the media and goes to great lengths to hide stuff like this. So you wonder if this is all a spectacle to be like "look, we're changing! We're improving human rights." And they figured this was a good way to draw attention to it. But will they really change?