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By: Gargi Rakhade
Since April of 2017, the Chinese government has detained more than a million ethnic minorities living in China, predominantly the Uigher Muslim population residing in the Xinjiang province. . While the Chinese government refers to the Uigher detainment centers as “re-education camps”, reports and interviews have found that these camps are more like internment camps, where Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are put under heavy surveillance, tortured, and in many cases, killed. And although UN officials, foreign leaders, and numerous human rights organizations have urged China to stop this crackdown on the Uighurs, the Chinese government continues their efforts to wipe the Uighur muslims’culture away, showing signs of a genocide of the Uigher people.
A recent report based off of regional data, policy documents, and interviews with the minority women in Xinjiang done by the Associated Press, and a China scholar and researcher, Adrian Zenz, found that in new effort to limit the population of ethnic minorities, including the Uighurs, the Chinese government is coercing Uighur women to undergo sterilization surgeries, involuntarily fitting women with intrauterine device (IUD), and/or forcing pregnant Uighur women to have an abortion. Furthermore, if these women do not comply with the birth quota, and refuse an abortion, they threaten and send these women and their families to these internment camps. In cases of being released from the camp, these women are not only under heavy surveillance of Chinese police/security, but these former detainees are also given injections which have stopped their periods or caused unusual bleeding and other side effects which are consistent with the effects of birth control drugs. Going deeper into the report, the Associated Press found that this practice of forced sterilization and involuntary birth control targeted towards ethnic minorities in Xinjiang is far more widespread and systematic than previously thought.
The Chinese government’s tactics to control and, ultimately eliminate the population of Uighur Muslims in China, has already started showing amongst the numbers, as birth rates in Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar (located in the Xinjiang province) have plummeted by 60% from 2015-2018 , and will continue to fall by 24% yearly, while the national birth rate is only projected to drop by 4.2% annually, nationwide, clearly showing that the Uighurs and ethnic minorities in China are being targeted on a much wider scale. For the Uighurs, going over the birth quota and refusing these birth control measures is a matter of life or death. s. But for the Han Chinese majority? They are spared the unwanted abortions, forced IUD’s, involuntary sterilization, and internment camps, and rather, encouraged to have more kids. This shows the Chinese governments’ intent to wash away the entire Uighur culture, and effectively cause genocide of the Uighur people.
The ruthless and unprecedented drop in the Uighur population, combined with the climate of terror the government has created along with the widespread birth control measures clearly point to a genocide of the Uighur people. It is apparent that the forced sterilization of Uighur women is a part of a wider campaign to subjugate Uighurs. This “birth control” campaign is a part of a government-organized assault to purge the Uighurs of their identity and of their faith and to forcefully assimilate them. Joanne Smith Finley who works at Newcastle University in the UK calls it a “slow, creeping, genocide”. And further into his report, Arian Zenz confirms that because the Chinese government is directly trying to genetically reduce the Uighur population, it legally meets the UN definition of a genocide.
While Adria Zenz and other scholars have encouraged the UN, and foreign countries to make the genocide of the Uighur Muslims in China more of a priority, there needs to be further preventative action taken. The UN and other organizations need to be more proactive before it's too late for the Uighurs, because their entire culture, heritage, identities, and lives are on the line. We need to put and end to this genocide before it gets more dangerous than it already is. Before more lives have been lost and destroyed.
Discussion Questions:
What steps should the UN take to stop the Uighur genocide in China?
How will coronavirus affect the Uighurs who are being detained in China's “re-education camps”?
Should the ICC do an investigation on the Uighur detention camps in China?
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