janw@inmet.UUCP (09/18/86)
From "Helping Hand Won't Solve Africa's Problems" by Nick Eber-
stadt, in WSJ, Sep 17, 1986, p.30. :
Many poor Africans seem to fear that family-planning programs
will be used to enforce involuntary sterility upon them.
Last March, the Washington Post recounted a story of a primary
school in rural Kenya from which hundreds of children ran
screaming, some scrambling through windows, upon the approach
of an unfamiliar car: it was thought to contain population
workers who would inject them with nonreversible contraceptives.
The previous year starving Kenyans in drought-afflicted areas
were reported to have refused relief shipments of U.S. corn, on
the rumor that the corn had been laced with sterilants.
Kenya, of course, is a country in which civil liberties are rela-
tively well secured and government policies relatively en-
lightened. It is precisely for these reasons that such stories of
deep-seated distrust and fear are noteworthy.
In other words, these scenes are probably worse in other places,
but we are unlikely to hear about them.
[orb@whuts.UUCP ]
/* ---------- "Re: Population control" ---------- */
>But to imply that caring people throughout the world who are do-
>ing what they can, including population control, to stop the
>senseless deaths of 30 children a minute from starvation simply
>view humans as "tools" is an absolute outrage.
These "caring" people may seem to themselves as noble as Dr.
Schweitzer; but the "cared for" apparently see them as the
equivalents of Dr. Mengele...
Jan Wasilewsky