Health authorities are planning to sterilise nearly 10,000 people in southern China over the next four days as part of a population control programme.
The rule of one child per family has been in force for decades
Some of the people in Puning City will be forced to have the procedure carried out against their will.
Amnesty International says forced sterilisation "amounts to torture".
Reports in the Chinese media say that Puning Health authorities in Guangdong Province have launched a special campaign to sterilise people who already have at least one child in order to ensure local birth control quotas are met.
Chinese newspaper reports say that those who refuse to be sterilised have seen their elderly mothers or fathers taken away and detained.
Hundreds of people in Puning are said to have been locked up...
