{"id":238337,"date":"2021-01-21T07:35:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T13:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=238337"},"modified":"2021-01-21T14:34:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T20:34:56","slug":"documentary-inhumane-treatment-baby-girls-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/documentary-inhumane-treatment-baby-girls-china\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: Documentary shows inhumane treatment of baby girls in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A clip from a 1996 documentary investigating the state of China’s orphanages has been making the rounds on social media for its 25th anniversary. “The Dying Rooms,” which won a Peabody Award, exposed how baby girls were treated \u2014 either aborted, abandoned, killed, or left to suffer in cold and uncaring orphanages.<\/p>\n

Kate Blewett and Brian Woods visited China, where they saw grossly inhumane conditions. Children were tied to chairs, unable to move, and deprived of any affection, education, or attention. Neglected and alone, the children compulsively rock back and forth in their chairs. “All girls, of course,” a woman, speaking anonymously, said. “Unless they are handicapped boys. But healthy boys are never abandoned. Ever.”<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a040 years of death and heartache: The results of China\u2019s One-Child Policy<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even infants in cribs were tied down, unable to move and left to soak in their own soiled diapers. Blewett said when she entered the rooms, they smelled overwhelmingly of sour milk, urine, and body odor.<\/p>\n

“The One-Child Policy tended to not take Chinese traditional cultural son preferences into consideration,” Blewett was told. “Sons generally carry the family name, so obviously the son is more important than the daughter. Now because each family is limited, in a sense, to only one child, the gender becomes a very important concern to each family.” When boys are born in China, parents celebrate with fireworks; when girls are born, the video explains that parents “celebrate” by naming their daughters Lai-Di or Zheo-Di, which means “baby brother come.” Over six million women in China have been given these names. In the countryside, girls are referred to as “maggots in the rice.”<\/p>\n