Zhu has plenty to cry about. Last month, her plight became a major embarrassment to the governments of Australia and China. Human-rights activists in Australia broadcast her sad story to the world. Zhu left Beihai on a smuggler’s ship in 1994, seeking a better life in Australia. She ended up in a refugee camp, and three years later immigration authorities deported her. Eight months pregnant at the time with her second child, Zhu says she was forced to undergo an abortion when she returned to Beihai, because one child is still the legal maximum under Chinese law. Zhu then melted back into quiet anonymity until Brian Harradine, a conservative Australian politician, publicly aired a video, shot in China, in which the woman told her story. Australian human-rights activists now accuse Australia of knowingly sending her back to face abortion and conspiring with China to keep the matter quiet. “There’s no goodwill here,” says Marion Le, a refugee advocate in Australia. “It’s a coverup.”
Perhaps not entirely unwillingly, Zhu has become a pawn in an Australian political struggle. Australian officials scrambled to smooth over the scandal. “We have absolutely no responsibility for her,” said Federal Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, “none at all.” But when a crew from Australia’s “60 Minutes” TV show brought Zhu, weeping, to the Australian consulate in Guangzhou last month, diplomats put her up in a hotel for three weeks while negotiating a deal with Chinese authorities. Hoping to salvage the public relations fiasco, the Australians quietly persuaded Chinese officials to guarantee Zhu’s housing and job, to grant her Australian-born daughter a resident’s permit, and to waive her abortion fee and the $2,500 fine for breaking the one-child policy. The Australian government says Beijing also guaranteed that she would face no punishment.
Australian activists, meanwhile, are eager to exploit Zhu’s case to attack their government’s poor treatment of refugees. In her tearful video, Zhu says Australian officials promised that she wouldn’t be forced to abort her baby when she returned to China. Harradine argues that Zhu is not the first pregnant woman to be deported. In turn, Prime Minister John Howard says he isn’t convinced that Zhu was forced to terminate her pregnancy. “We have to get to the bottom of what happened in China as best we can,” Howard said.
Beijing didn’t exactly welcome the publicity. According to refugee activist Le, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official called the Australian ambassador in Beijing twice at night “and gave him an ultimatum to back off, saying ‘she’s our national, she will be in no danger’.” China is sensitive to international criticism of its one-child-family policy, despite the fact that it has been relaxed dramatically over the last decade. The government officially opposes coerced abortions, which were common 15 years ago. Overzealous officials sometimes still use forced abortions to meet quotas, but in the countryside, families are generally allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl. In negotiations, the Chinese quickly met the Australians’ requests. “The Chinese were extremely eager to have this situation taken care of,’’ says a Western diplomat who is familiar with the negotiations.
As the politicians tussle, Zhu isn’t above milking her tragedy. Seeing opportunity after her exposure on “60 Minutes,” Zhu applied for an Australian visa again. During her three years in a refugee camp in Australia, Zhu first claimed she was being threatened by gangsters who had killed her father back home. Later, she hoped incorrectly that her pregnancy would grant her baby–and possibly herself–automatic citizenship in Australia.
Australian human-rights activists now worry that Zhu is mentally unstable. While Australian and Chinese officials were working out the deal, activists say Zhu tried to slash her wrists with a knife. Today, Zhu waits in Beihai, still hoping for a visa to Australia. Immigration Minister Ruddock has convened an inquiry into her deportation, saying it is against official policy to return women in advanced stages of pregnancy. Meanwhile, security forces in Beihai keep a close watch on Zhu. “What we really want,” whispers Zhu Qinghe, her mysterious relative, “is a visa, for the whole family, to go to Australia.” In Zhu’s cruel world, everybody has an angle.
