Village Lockdown

"We don't expect to get our child back. We just want to know whether she is still alive. All we want is one small glimpse of her so we can die peacefully."
Xia Fengge, 50, Qiaonan, Hebei Anxin country, China

"We now have a curfew in the village and reporters are not allowed to enter. My parents have been feeling unwell over the last few days and didn't sleep at all last night." [His parents were offered "compensation" of $34,000 to abandon their search.] "They have also tried to restrict my freedoms and have closely monitored our house."
Liu Lingqun, son of Xia Fengge and Liu Laogen, 64

Eighteen years earlier, the Chinese couple, now both disabled lost their 11-day-old baby girl. The child was abducted because the pair, living in a small rural village, had disobeyed China's one-child family rule. Although the one-child policy was relaxed for rural areas and enforced in urban areas, they already had two children. The birth of a third was simply a stretch too far for the village officials.

Liu Lingqun was ten years old at the time his baby sister was born. "My father was taken to the town centre, handcuffed and beaten for two days. I immediately ran out after the two women. I didn't know what was going on but I ran, out of intuition, after seeing my little sister being carried away." He holds the town government responsible for the "brutal measure" to seize the baby from his parents.

The family and its extended members were convinced that the baby's disappearance was the work of village officials working for the family planning bureau. The parents, now in ill health, and feeling they don't have much longer to live, yearn to know about their daughter, how she is, where she is, whether life has been kind to her, a child of their own they never knew.

But officials from Qiaonan where they live are furious that the couple has gone public with their plea. The couple's Beijing lawyer said, "The village has had a lockdown since last night and strangers are not allowed to enter." 

"We haven't heard of the lockdown of Qiaonan village. We haven't received any notice on the lawsuit. We don't know the details", responded a woman at the headquarters of the Anxin county government.