The Chinese regime is committing yet another crime against humanity that is the systematic Uyghur birth suppression, in addition to its mass internment drive in East Turkistan, while at the same time encouraging its Han majority population to have more children. Although this piece of breaking news based on solid evidence was reported by The Associated Press (2020) on June 29, 2020, the state-directed deliberate measures against the Uyghur population growth are nothing new to the Uyghurs, accounts of which circulated largely amongst the Uyghurs themselves. Uyghur women have been subjected to forced abortion along with forced sterilization since the mid-1990s, especially in the south of East Turkistan where most Uyghurs reside.
For instance, in Khotan the forced birth control and forced abortion have been the Chinese regime’s persisted practices for many years prior to its mass internment drive (i.e. before 2016), where the local government demands all Uyghur women to have intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUDs) inserted after giving birth to their first child. Uyghur families would have to send an application to the local government in order to temporarily remove the IUDs when they wish to have a second child. In villages, Uyghur women are almost always forced to have IUDs inserted after the first child, while in the cities, though may not be forced they are threatened to lose their jobs if they bear a third child. Irrespective of where they live (in the villages or cities), Uyghur families must pay huge fines (compared to their income level) for having more than two children, where the third or the fourth child will often be stateless despite their parents having paid the fines. And in many other cases, Uyghur women who are civil servants or work in government sectors would be forced to undergo abortions for having more than two children.
The investigation of The Associated Press (2020) accompanied by the research of Dr. Adrian Zenz (2020a), based on a systematic analysis of Chinese government’s statistical data and various primary source documents, have vindicated Uyghurs’ anecdotal and personal accounts of forced contraception and forced abortions.
“The [Chinese] state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show” (The Associated Press 2020). Beijing’s financial support for birth control had seen a dramatic effect in East Turkistan in the period 2015-2018, where the birth rates in the southern predominantly Uyghur cities of Khotan and Kashgar decreased by at least 60%, and in 2019 across East Turkistan, birth rates fell by almost 24%, whereas the national birth rates in China fell by only 4.2% (ibid.). The principle of equal treatment is absent under the Chinese rule in East Turkistan, in that Uyghurs and other minorities are punished in the abovementioned ways plus possible internment for having too many children (Zenz 2020a), while Han Chinese are not subjected to any of these, except for paying fines if caught. As a matter of fact, in Qaraqash (Karakash) county the most common reason for extrajudicial internment was having too many children, where 149 out of 484 camp internees were incarcerated for this very reason, according to a leaked government document (Zenz 2020b; The Associated Press 2020).
After being sent to the internment camps, Uyghur women are subjected to forced IUDs, forced intake of birth control pills, and forced contraceptive injection, while some that managed to flee the country later found out that they became sterile (The Associated Press 2020; Nikkei Asian Review 2019). Former camp internees also recounted cases of forced abortion transpired in the internment camps, where they were told that they would undergo abortions if tested positive after pregnancy checks (The Associated Press 2020).
Since 2017 the regime started to crack down on illegal births, seeking to punish prior violations dating back to as early as the 1990s, resulting in a dramatic surge in the number of prosecutions in birth-control related violations, accompanied by extrajudicial internment at least in the case of three counties (Zenz 2020a, 10-11). Minority counties often imposed double punishments: first prosecuted birth control violations, then forced the violators to undergo IUD insertions or sterilization procedures (ibid., 12).
In 2014, the number of women who had undergone IUD insertion in East Turkistan was over 200,000; however, this number spiked to 330,000 (i.e. around 65 percent increase) in 2018, in sheer contrast to elsewhere in China as more and more women started removing the IUDs (The Associated Press 2020).
According to government birth control data, between spring 2017 and fall 2018 nearly 74% of married women in 12 rural and urban areas of Kök Gumbez District had IUD insertions, half of them only had one child; in 2018, 80% of all net IUD insertions (minus the removals) in China occurred in East Turkistan, despite the latter accounting for just 1.8% of China’s population (Zenz 2020a, 14).
By 2019 more than 80% of women of childbearing age in four minority prefectures in southern East Turkistan were to be subjected to involuntary long-acting contraception (Zenz 2020a, 12-13). Through family planning, the regional government in Kizilsu Prefecture is aiming at a bare 1.05‰ (i.e. 1.05 per mille/thousand) birth rate target for the year 2020 (ibid., 9). It is worth noting that IUDs cause severe pain and discomfort, even regular vaginal bleeding, and those who managed to have them removed after years of discomfort likely became sterile as the IUDs punctured their wombs (RFA 2020c).
In the past, sterilization procedures in East Turkistan were not carried out in a large-scale manner. Beginning in late 2017 many local family planning documents demonstrate the Chinese regime’s efforts to offer free sterilization procedures and also set official targets. In 2018, 1.1% of all married women in East Turkistan had been sterilized (Zenz 2020a, 17). As indicated in official documents, 34.3% of all married women in Khotan and 14.1% in Guma County were planned to be sterilized in 2019, with ample government funding that continued into 2020 (ibid.). In 2018, the local government launched the “free birth control surgery” campaign, intending to subject the rural populations to mass sterilization, with ample funding to performance hundreds of thousands of tubal ligation sterilization procedures (ibid., 2; 15). Zenz (ibid., 18) notes that, based on official primary sources, it is likely that the state-directed mass sterilization of women with three or more children is taking place.
Here is a case of one Uyghur woman who had been subjected to tubal ligation sterilization. The former camp internee Zumrat Dawut had been incarcerated for over two months in 2018, whose ordeal could have lasted much longer had her husband not pressed Pakistani diplomats, according to a Washington Post report (Rauhala & Fifield 2019). Upon her release, she was forced to renounce her religion and not to speak about what happened in the camp by signing documents; in addition, she had to pay a sum of $2,500 for having three not two children. Subsequently, she was offered a free sterilization procedure by the Chinese government, while still in a terrified and vulnerable state, she could not say no for fear of further internment. On October 22, 2018 she underwent an irreversible surgical sterilization.
State-directed forced abortions also transpire in East Turkistan, where the Chinese regime commands the hospitals to carry out forced abortions and infanticides, according to a piece of reportage by Radio Free Asia (RFA 2020c) in August 2020. The Chinese family planning policy allows two children for Uyghurs and other minorities who reside in cities, while for the minorities in the countryside three children. Hasiyet Abdulla, worked as an obstetrician in multiple hospitals in East Turkistan over 15-year span, said that between births there must be a waiting period of at least three years, meaning that Uyghur women must wait at least three years to have another baby after giving birth to their first child. The strict enforcement of this birth control policy has led to many abortions, including late-term abortions and in some cases infanticides (i.e. the killings of full-term newborns), where those in the maternity wards were simply following orders. “They wouldn’t give the baby to the parents—they kill the babies when they’re born,” Abdulla said.
Every hospital runs a family planning unit in East Turkistan, not only keeping track of all pregnancies and supervising IUD insertions, but also monitoring pregnant women for possible birth control violations, such as the rule of at least three-year time gap between births. The state- affiliated news outlet Ürümchi News Online reported that the former leader of the family planning unit Chen Yanchun, at the Women and Children’s Hospital in the capital city of Ürümchi, stated that there occurs an average of 30 or an upper limit of around 60 forced abortions at the hospital (RFA 2020c).
Shahide Yarmuhemmet, a Uyghur woman who worked at a local family planning office in Ürümchi’s New City District (新市区) between 1996 to 2011, confirmed the veracities of Abdulla’s account. She said that the heavy-handed enforcement of the family planning policy is upheld at every administrative level both in cities and the countryside, where violations are met with forced abortions; moreover, an application is required of a couple wishing to have a child.
Radio Free Asia has documented forced abortions in East Turkistan dating back to at least 2005, and in a recent interview with a Uyghur woman named Bumeryem who currently lives in Turkey, it was revealed that she was subjected to forced abortion back in 2004 when she was 5 months pregnant with her fourth child, stating that “[i]f my baby who was aborted were alive today, he’d be 15 years old” (ibid.). In the recovery room Bumeryem met other women who also underwent forced abortions at different stages of pregnancy, including full-term. Expressions of discontent over the past few decades regarding the family planning policy have been deliberately associated with “separatism” and “extremism” by the Chinese regime.
Not long after the publication of Zenz’s research (Zenz 2020a) on the systematic Uyghur birth suppression, the local Communist Party officials in Suydung township, situated in Ili prefecture’s Qorghas county, warned local residents about possible visits from both Chinese and foreign inspectors that they could face fines or be sent to internment camps if they tell the truth about the family planning policies (RFA 2020d). A local police officer as well as a neighborhood committee chief confirmed to Radio Free Asia about this series of prep work, which involved instructing local residents in how to answer the questions concerning the family planning policies and internment camps, if asked whether they have IUDs inserted, they should say no (ibid.).
Source: “The persecution of Uyghurs in East Turkistan” Authors: Erkin Kâinat; Adrian Zenz; Adiljan Abdurihim
Link: https://www.utjd.org/register/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/the_persecution_of_uyghurs_hard_copy.pdf
