Myanmar's 2-Child Policy for Muslims

Michael Cook

It is hard to imagine a more inhumane policy than China's one-child policy. But there is one: the two-child policy imposed on Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims. Late last month government authorities in the largely Buddhist country reaffirmed a 2005 policy which punishes Rohingya women who bear more than two children with hefty fines and loss of legal rights for the children.

After a long silence on the issue, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has condemned the measures. She has told the media that if reports of the policy were true, it was illegal. "It is not good to have such discrimination. And it is not in line with human rights either."

According to al-Jazeera, a government spokesman, Win Myaing, explained that the regulations were meant to dampen sectarian tensions. The Rohingya live mostly in two town, which are islands in a sea of Buddhists. "The population growth of Rohingya Muslims is 10 times higher than that of the Rakhine (Buddhists)," he said. "Overpopulation is one of the causes of tension."

The Rohingya number between 800,000 and 1 million, most of them living near the border with Bangladesh. They have been the target of legal discrimination and sectarian violence. Human Rights Watch has accused the Myanmar government of conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against the Rohingya.

Tensions between Buddhist Burmese and the Muslim Rohingya go back centuries but were greatly heightened during the British colonial period and the Japanese occupation in World War II. Since 1982 Myanmar has not even acknowledged that they are citizens.

In 2005 local authorities began to enforce a two-child policy. Rohingya couples who wish to marry must seek government approval - a process which can take up to two years. They must agree to have no more than two children. More children are punishable with fines and imprisonment. As a result unsafe abortions are common among women who become pregnant before they are legally married or who are carrying a third child.

According to Human Rights Watch, "Rohingya children born out of wedlock or in a family that already has two children do not receive any status whatsoever from the government, making them ineligible for education and other government services, unable to receive travel permissions, and they are later not permitted to marry or acquire property. They are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention."

Source: BioEdge

Lebanon: Muslim Fertility Slump

As the only Arab country where a substantial proportion of the population is Christian, Lebanon’s geo-political importance is out of proportion to its size – four million people in a country the size of Jamaica. It has a vital role to play in struggles between the West and the Muslim world and in dialogue between Christianity and Islam.

But a poll taken in January shows that two-thirds of Lebanese Christians feel that the very existence of their communities is under long-term threat in their country. They say that too many of their fellow Christians are emigrating, their share of the population is shrinking and their political leaders are consumed with factional infighting.

This is a glum picture – but it may be false, according to a bombshell report on Lebanese demography just released in English – and reported exclusively in MercatorNet. It has been extensively reported in the Lebanese media.

The report was produced for the Lebanese Information Centre (LIC), a Beirut think tank, and the figures were checked by Statistics Lebanon, one of the country’s most prominent polling and research firms.

According to this study, the clichés are wrong. The proportion of Christians in the country – which currently stands at about 34 percent -- is slowly increasing. By 2030, it will rise to 37 percent and by 2045 to more than 39 percent. And because hundreds of thousands of overseas Lebanese are eligible to vote, the increase in registered voters is even more impressive. By 2030, 40 percent of Lebanese on the electoral roll will be Christian, and by 2045, the figure will be 41 percent.



In the knife-edge politicking of Lebanon, this figure has momentous consequences, says Dr Wissam Raji, of the LIC, the lead author of the report. “Ever since the Syrian army left Lebanon in 2005,” he says, “the Christians have been gaining momentum. According to our constitution, Christians have 50 percent of the political power of the country. These figures eliminate the possibility of evenly dividing the political power into three as suggested for the last 10 years by the majority of the Shiites who want equal shares between themselves and the Sunnis and the Christians.”

The topic of population statistics in Lebanon is always potentially inflammatory. For more than 50 years, the government has refused to publish statistics about the size of religious groups. Lebanon is the only member of the United Nations which has not conducted a census since the end of World War II. In fact, while the United States takes a constitutionally-mandated census every ten years, Lebanon’s one and only census took place in 1932 when France was the ruling colonial power.

According to figures gathered at the time, Maronite Christians made up about 29 percent of the population, Sunni Muslims about 22 per cent and Shiite Muslims about 20 percent. A decade later, in 1943, Lebanon became independent. The population then was officially estimated to be about 30 percent Maronite, 21 percent Sunni and 19 percent Shiite.

The Maronites, Sunnis and Shiites are just the largest and most powerful of the 18 religious denominations recognised by Lebanon’s constitution. The Greek Orthodox are currently estimated to be about 8 percent, the Melkite Catholics about 5 percent and the Druze, a Muslim sect, about 5 percent.

However, political power in the government was parcelled out in the 1943 constitution among the three largest groups in proportion to the size of their population in the 1932 census. The president was always to be a Maronite, as it was the largest single denomination. The prime minister was a Sunni, and the speaker of the House a Shiite. Because Christians had constituted 54 percent of the population in the 1932 census, parliamentary seats and jobs in the public service were allocated on a 6:5 ratio.

But the Christian birth rate began to fall and Christian emigration began to rise. A civil war raged from 1975 to 1990. For everyone it brought misery, chaos and death, and between 600,000 and 900,000 Lebanese fled the country. From 1975 to 1984, 80 percent of those leaving were Christians. But as the resistance of the Christian militias stiffened and Muslim factions began fighting amongst themselves, the proportion was reversed. Between 1985 and 1990, 83 percent of the emigrants were Muslim.



In 1990 a peace accord was signed which brought an uneasy peace. Everyone knew that a new government ought to reflect the new political and demographic realities, but there were no figures to back up the sensation that the Christian presence was diminishing. So the warring factions agreed that the proportion of deputies in the parliament and public servants should be adjusted from a 6:5 ratio of Christians to Muslims to 1:1. And that is where it stands today.

However, demography never sleeps. And quietly the proportion of Christians began to rise again. The first reason was unequal shares of emigrants. According to the Lebanese Information Centre, about 60 percent of the 700,000 people who have left the country after 1992 were Muslim. And then Muslim birth rates began to fall. Fast.

Although the Western media keeps ringing alarm bells about high Arab birth rates, the reality is quite different. Youssef Courbage, a distinguished Lebanese demographer who works in France and Norway, says, “Of the three major monotheistic religions, all of which encourage fertility, Islam is the one that encourages procreation the least.”

In Lebanon the Muslim fertility rate was 5.44 children per woman in 1971, compared to the much lower Christian birth rate of 3.56. But by 2004, the Lebanese Information Centre estimates that it had dropped to 1.82, compared to the Christian fertility rate of 1.53.

Why are birth rates so low in a society where most people’s identity is built around their religion?

The response of the Lebanese Information Centre can be summed up in three words: instability, education and secularisation. The war caused a slump in fertility. And as more opportunities opened up for girls, they married later and had fewer children. The growing secularisation of Lebanese society meant that both Christians and Muslims were paying less attention to the exhortations of religious leaders to have big families.

“Huge numbers of our men emigrate,” Dr Raji told MercatorNet, “and the emigration of families is much lower than individual emigration. So over the last 30 years this has led to a huge number of single women in our society. With political stability I believe that our fertility rate will definitely increase in the coming years due to lower intensity of emigration.”

The upshot of all these trends is that a 40-year decline in the Christian population has been reversed. Unless another war breaks out, it is unlikely that Lebanon will lose its identity as the only place in the Arab world where Christians and Muslims share political power.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

 

Are all Bioethicists Crazy?

The next crazy idea from bioethicists involves children.  They want to genetically engineer our children so they will be environmentally friendly.  This obvious lack of common sense characterizes the transhuman and utilitarian ideology that is so common among bioethicists these days.

As Michael Cook, the editor of MercatorNet, explains: "A utilitarian bioethicist is always going to be a loose cannon, rolling wildly around the deck in ethical storms, splintering and smashing the fragile public image of his or her profession. If other bioethicists want to repair their dented prestige, shunning utilitarian colleagues would be a good place to start."

Consider Oxford bioethicist Rebecca Roache, who told the Guardian that most great ideas seem preposterous at first.

“Human engineering may seem bizarre and unrealistic, but this does not mean it could not turn out to be feasible and promising: telephones, ‘test tube babies’, and personal computers are all important aspects of modern life that were once regarded as bizarre and unrealistic.”

Help Fight Population Control Fanatics

Austin Ruse


A father is dragged on stage in front of 200,000 and berated for having too many children. This happened a few years ago in India, and was reported in the New York Times.

A mother is coerced into trading her fertility for a few bags of groceries. This happened a few years ago in Peru, and was reported in the New York Times.

A family’s house is bulldozed because they had a second child. This happened a few years ago in China.

This is the ugly face of population control. The ugly face belongs to population control fanatics working in UN agencies, powerful advocacy groups, and within governments.

The Friday Fax has reported on this issue and these people for 14 years. And we need your financial help to continue this fight and this coverage.

There are many wonderful groups that come to the UN every once in a while: Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and others. But C-FAM and the Friday Fax are here full time.

We are at this work every single day. Our office is only a few hundred yards from UN headquarters. There hasn’t been a day in 14 years that we have not thought about, or worked on these issues; the ugly face of population control, and the effort to spread abortion around the world.

We need your help to keep this going. We need your prayers and we need your financial help. The Friday Fax is amazingly expensive. It costs $170,000 annually to research, write and report on 104 Friday Fax stories each and every year, year in and year out.

This includes staff salaries, rent, phones, computers, printing and postage, and a hefty cost for sending out 30,000,000 emails each year. That’s right 30 million!

There are many ways to give; by credit card on our totally secure server, PayPal, regular mail, wire transfer and others.

We need to raise $85,000 during this 8-week campaign. We have raised $31,000 so far. So, we are getting there! But we need your help right now to reach our goal.

We are at the UN every single day watching the people who are making this happen.

Go HERE and give.


Yours sincerely,

Austin Ruse
President/C-FAM
Publisher/Friday Fax

UN Population Projections Force Policy Change

We’ve alluded to the UN’s latest population predictions a couple of times already in the last couple of weeks here on Mercatornet. Our editor, Michael Cook, wrote a great article on population decline in which he mentioned the problems with the UN’s predictions and linked to Fred Pearce’s fairly scathing analysis of the UN’s models.

The major problem with the UN’s approach is that it has revised upwards the projected growth rates of the world from its predictions in 2008 despite the fact that the current actual world population and growth rates are lower than that predicted two years ago. So in effect the UN has predicted that the future growth rates will be higher than it predicted at a time when the actual growth rate and population was higher. The trend is down, expect in the projections. It appears that the UN in 2008 assumed that world fertility was heading inexorably towards 1.85 children per woman; while in its latest projections the number has been revised upwards to 2.1 children per woman – the population replacement level. As Pearce states:

“The assumption now is that countries with higher fertility rates will fall to the 2.1 figure and not below, while those below will rise to reach it.”

This is despite the fact that there is no known case of a population growth rate declining to replacement level and remaining there. It also seems a big stretch to see European countries, Japan and China raising their fertility levels to 2.1 anytime soon. Thus, the UN seems to be making some fairly problematic assumptions in its global population projections. Pearce argues that the UN should explain why the higher level of 2.1 children per woman was imposed upon the projection model.

This is the problem with treating the pronouncements of the UN as gospel. It is a political organisation made up of fallible humans which has its own agenda to run. However, in pushing its agenda, the UN is using its flawed projections to justify its position. As we can see in this BBC story about Nigeria.

According to the UN’s projections, the population of Nigeria will reach 730 million by 2100 and will be the third largest in the world behind China's and India's. The UN special adviser Jeffrey Sachs is “alarmed” by this projection. (Although Chinwuba Iyizoba would disagree.) Mr Sachs told the AFP news agency that:

“It is not healthy. Nigeria should work towards attaining a maximum of three children per family".

The Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria agrees with this goal of course. (As an aside, isn’t the idea of Planned Parenthood to help people “plan” their parenthood, whether they want to have three or thirteen children? Isn’t supporting an “optimum” number of children somewhat dictatorial?)

So, we have a UN official arguing for a policy (interestingly, a policy that China seems to be moving away from) based upon the UN population projection that has some serious question marks hanging over it. Does this perhaps give us an insight as to why the projection was revised to include the 2.1 figure? After all, it's easier to get countries to enforce a change in policy which you advocate when you can scare them with the consequences if they don’t follow your advice. I can’t help but think that there will be more stories like this in the near future – some country is projected to become hugely overpopulated by the UN, therefore that country must indulge in some sort of population control policy advocated by the UN. Does the projeciton justify the policy, or does the policy justify the revised projection?

Putin Promises to Boost Birth Rates and Life Expectancy

Vladimir Putin has promised to spend £33 billion to boost the country's flagging population by up to a third over the next four years, during a two-and-a-half hour speech that appeared to gear him up for a 2012 presidential run.

On the country's declining population, he pledged to boost the country's birth rate by between 25 and 30 per cent by 2015.

"According to preliminary calculations, between 2011 and 2015 some 1.5 trillion roubles will be invested in demography projects," he said. "First, we expect the average life expectancy to reach 71 years. Second, we expect to increase the birth rate by 25 to 30 per cent in comparison to the 2006 birth rate."

Read it all here.
 
 
MercatorNet has this comment:
 
It is interesting to note that 2006 is taken as the benchmark date where the birth rate increase will be measured from. Why not take the recent census data as the starting point? An answer may be found in the fact that according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2006 Population Data Sheet, the Russian birth rate was around 10 births per 1000 people. An increase of 25 - 30% on that number would take the birth rate to around 12.5 - 13 births per 1000 people. And what do you know? According to the latest census data, the current Russian birth rate is 12.6 births per 1000 people. Thus, it seems that Prime Minister Putin’s target has been reached without a rouble being spent! That is the mark of a successful politician – pick a target that has already been reached and then throw lots of money at it and then point to the fact that you’ve reached your target as proof that your policies work. However, on the other hand at least the average life expectancy target of 71 years has not yet been reached according to the latest census. So, what will the money be spent on?

“Under the plan, the government would build more affordable housing for families, promote a healthy lifestyle and stop the country's brain drain. Previous schemes have seen cash incentives given to parents with two or more children to be spent on housing and education…He promised to stem Russia's population decline by supporting young families and improving health care…”

Perhaps some of the money should be sent on ensuring that members of the Russian Government attend the first international demographic summit being held in June and organised by the World Congress of Families. To sweeten the deal, the cost of sending delegates will not be very high at all – in fact they won’t even have to leave Moscow!

Of course, all of this means that Russia should be the case study par excellence for those seeking a reduction in the Earth’s population. Want to reduce the number of human beings on this Earth? Just follow Russia’s lead. But don’t be surprised when you see its leaders trying to drag it in the opposite demographic direction.