A Crisis of Compassion
by Melinda Tankard Reist
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

Introduction

The case of Zhu Quing Ping who was returned to China eight months pregnant to face a forced abortion, apparently was not an isolated incident, contrary to Government claims. It was just the most public example of the erosion of a compassionate Australian refugee policy.

Melinda Tankard Reist
Melinda Tankard Reist is a freelance writer with a special interest in bioethics, medical abuses of women and human rights abuses in population programs. She advises Senator Brian Harradine on these issues. Her forthcoming book, Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Abortion Grief, will be published in March next year by Duffy and Snellgrove.

IN THE SAME WEEK that newly arrived Kosovar refugees were lovingly served jellied fruit, custard and Anzac biscuits, given Bananas in Pyjamas raincoats for their kids, and put to bed beneath handmade quilts, a shocking story emerged about Australia's treatment of another would-be refugee: a Chinese woman, forcibly deported, her eight and a half month old unborn child killed on her return.

The do-good, feel good 'Safely in our Arms' atmosphere surrounding the arrival of the war-torn refugees, was dampened somewhat by the revelation about the Chinese woman. Debate about Australia's disparate treatment of those seeking our protection-welcoming some while moving others on-prompted a Senate inquiry into the Operation of Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program, in addition to a Government inquiry into the circumstances of the woman's removal.
Zhu Quing Ping was an illegal. She arrived by boat in 1994 and sought asylum. During three years detention at the Port Hedland detention centre in WA, she gave birth to a daughter. Requests to be allowed to marry the child's father were refused. Ms Zhu conceived a second baby in November 1996. All avenues of appeal were exhausted. The pregnancy was dismissed by a departmental official as irrelevant in a claim for refugee status.

Ms Zhu pleaded not to be sent back, at least not until her baby was safely delivered: her only request was to go home with a live baby. "The manager said I couldn't. He said you must go back to China, all the procedures have been arranged. [He said] You won't be persecuted when you return to China", she said in the video interview.

The manager was wrong. Ms Zhu's baby was returned to little more than a State-sanctioned death sentence.

Seven days after deportation she was subjected to an injection through her abdomen to destroy the baby's nervous system. Labour was induced, and the baby delivered (there were rumours the baby wasn't actually dead on delivery and may have been strangled, but the story is already gruesome enough).

Zhu received the bill for the abortion shortly after.