A 46-year-old woman from Jiangxi, China, is protesting that local officials forced her to be sterilized, allegedly out of revenge for having petitioned the local government earlier this year about the death of her daughter.
Mao Yuanchun says the daughter died in a fight with her boyfriend, who was later ordered to pay $6,260 (40,000 yuan) in compensation with no jail time.
Mao says she was subsequently taken to a clinic, dragged onto an operating table, and forcibly sterilized.
Mao’s husband, Peng Wuju, said his wife sat down on the floor to try to prevent the procedure, but was grabbed by officials and dragged through six or seven rooms to the operating table.
"They took my wife and they were warning me, saying ‘you could still have children' -- they said it like that," he said. "There are no children. She’s already sterile. We went for a check-up and she wasn’t pregnant. My wife said, ‘I can’t get pregnant, why sterilize me?’ He said ‘it’s not enough for you to say it, you have to prove it.’ She said 'if you don’t believe me, what can I do?' So they forced her to get it done."
Mao says that after her family protested her treatment, the local government offered to pay her medical bills.
Her husband said the family was forced to accept the compensation and an apology.
Mao says she is still in some pain, but will not be going back to a doctor.
