A 46-year-old woman is inhumanely treated by the authorities in Huangqiao, Jiangxi. She had petitioned Beijing demanding justice for her daughter who died in a quarrel with her boyfriend. Local authorities tied her to a table and performed a tubal ligation. China's government is increasingly unable to control the violent behaviour of its officials.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - On the eve of Sino-US talks on human rights, another case of forced sterilisation has occurred, this time in Huangqiao, Jiangxi province, in particularly nasty circumstances. The authorities in fact acted out of vengeance against a 46-year-old woman "guilty" of presenting a petition to the central government, this according to Women's Rights Without Frontiers, a group dedicated to women's rights in China.

The woman posted the following account on the internet. "On March 14, my husband was being escorted back from making a petition. To retaliate for his petition, the town government sent more than 20 strong men. I could no longer give birth to a child at that time, but they still dragged my legs, treated me like an animal, and forcibly performed a tubal ligation on the operating table of the Family Planning Office. Guoqing Luo (the Deputy Town Secretary) also exclaimed, 'The Government takes the consequences! The Government has the money!' it was terrible."

Women's Rights Without Frontiers phoned the victim's husband and learnt of the tragic circumstances that led to the petition. The couple's second daughter fell to her death from a fourth floor window during a quarrel with her boyfriend.

Her parents took the boyfriend's parents to court and won a judgment of 43,000 RMB (US$ 6,700), but they were never paid. The victim's husband petitioned to enforce the judgment. In retaliation for this petition, that local government forcibly sterilised his wife.

The local government told the victim's husband that if he and his wife kept quiet about the forced sterilisation, they would receive compensation. The couple, however, decided to post the incident on the Internet.

Under Chinese law, people have a right to seek redress by petitioning higher authorities. However, Communist officials tend to thwart this right out of fear that they might lose their job.

Increasingly, people are going public with their complaints about forced abortions and sterilisation. The recent case of Feng Jianmei, a woman forced to have an abortion in her seventh month of pregnancy, is a case in point. The picture of her in a hospital bed with her dead child went viral online.

• china
• forced
• abortion
• sterilisation