Hollywood studio helps China abortion thugs

A Hollywood studio is shooting a buddy movie in the Chinese city synonymous with forced abortion. Now, human rights activists are calling on Relativity Media to terminate its misbegotten project. Relativity Media began shooting the comedy "21 and Over" in Linyi, a city in Shandong province where the activist Chen Guangcheng's village is located. Chen has been imprisoned and brutally beaten for speaking out against the Chinese government policy of forced abortion and sterilization. The AP reports Chinese authorities have turned Chen's village of Dongshigu into a hostile, no-go zone and activists, foreign diplomats and reporters have been turned back, threatened and had stones thrown at them by men patrolling the village. Relativity Media joins the disgracefully long list of US companies that actively aid and abet China's brutal government at the expense of basic American - and human - values. The studio crowed about its collaboration with local communist officials in a press release. The party boss has called Relativity mogul Ryan Kavanaugh a "good friend." Human Rights Watch slammed Relativity Media. "They seem to be eager to assume this role of being a prop in Linyi's propaganda campaign to cast itself as a civilized municipality that promotes culture when the reality is that it is not only holding one of China's most prominent human rights defenders, but going to extraordinary lengths to persecute him," Human Rights Watch's senior Asia researcher Nicholas Bequelin told the AP. Relativity Media has co-produced or financed more than 200 films including “The Social Network,” "Bridesmaids," “The Fighter” and “Cowboys & Aliens.”