Praise God, a Life Saved!

Washington DC, Nov 20, 2008 / 03:39 am (CNA).- Following international attention which included the protests of U.S. Congressmen, China has released a detained ethnic minority Uyghur woman who was scheduled to undergo a coerced abortion.

Arzigul Tursun, who lives in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, is about 26 weeks pregnant with her third child. Chinese authorities tried to pressure her to have an abortion, but she refused and fled her home. According to a backgrounder from the office of Rep. Joe Pitts, authorities interrogated and threatened her relatives.

After fleeing from population control authorities, Arzigul was taken into custody on November 11. A relative was reportedly forced to sign a document authorizing the abortion, which was originally scheduled for November 13.

She then fled Gulja's municipal Water Gate Hospital, after which authorities found her at a friend’s house, Radio Free Asia reports.

Tursun’s father Hasan Tursunjan told Radio Free Asia that between 20 and 30 police cars came to the family home to search for his daughter and take her to the hospital to undergo an abortion.

“It was a big operation—and they treated us very rudely,” he said. “They confiscated all our cell phones, but I hid one. One of them was pushing my forehead and saying, ‘You have connections with the separatists in America—see if they can come and rescue your daughter or not.’”

“I was very upset at what he did to me and said, ‘I believe they will rescue us, if not today then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow—they will eventually rescue us,’” Tursunjan said.

“My youngest son was upset and rushed to us and shouted… ‘Don't touch my father!’ The [official] immediately called a few police over and they arrested him. They took him away with a car.”

He and some family members left for a relative’s house in the city, but police afterwards took him to a neighborhood where his daughter was found at a friend’s house.

“I saw many police cars,” Tursunjan reported to Radio Free Asia. “Many people from the neighborhood were watching. My daughter was leaning against the wall of one the buildings and crying. I was very sad…I rushed... (Continued here)