[Guizhou officials punished for birth control failures]

More than 100 party and municipal officials in a Guizhou Province city underwent castration to take the blame for their laxity in enforcing birth control. According to the Guizhou Daily dated June 22 reaching here Wednesday, party officials at Zhijin City who were supposed to see that couples were not to have more than 1 child failed to enforce this limit and consequently the rate of natural population increase in the area had become the highest in the province. When the provincial government criticized the officials, they hastily conducted self-criticism and more than 100 of them underwent vasectomy or tubal ligation in May, the paper said. The mass sterilization prompted more than 1700 married people to undergo similar surgery in a span of only 40 days, according to the Guizhou Daily. The strict birth control measures enforced by the Chinese Government have caused some resentment among the farmers. Recently, a group of farmers attacked a party official who tried to force a pregnant woman to undergo abortion, seriously injuring him. A man divorced his wife because she chose abortion against his wish.