China has an extremely coercive birth control policy in its Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region (north-west) with forced sterilization targeting the Uighur community in particular, a study published on Monday said.
Uighurs, mainly Muslims and speaking for the most part a Turkic language, that is to say related to Turkish, constitute one of the 56 ethnic groups of the country. They represent just under half of the 25 million people living in Xinjiang, a huge semi-desert territory long stricken by deadly attacks, attributed by Beijing to separatists and Islamists.
A number of births in free fall
Human rights organizations accuse China of interning at least one million Muslims in the region, in what they call political re-education camps. Beijing denies this figure and talks about vocational training centers, designed to help people find jobs and thus keep them away from extremism and terrorism.
In the two major prefectures in the region where the Uyghurs are the majority, the number of births has also dropped drastically since 2016, says Adrian Zenz, a German researcher who has already written several reports on Chinese policies in Xinjiang. He says he relies on Chinese administrative documents and interviews with local women. Some say they were forced to sterilize, or risk being sent to camps, according to the study. The implantation of an IUD would have been imposed on others.
China denies
China appears to be using coercive birth control in Xinjiang as part of "a broader strategy of ethno-racial domination," writes Adrian Zenz in this report by the Jamestown Foundation. This American organization founded in 1984 has the mission of "informing and educating political decision-makers" and says it has "contributed directly to the fall of communism" in Europe and the Soviet Union.
When questioned about the report, Chinese diplomatic spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday denied the allegations, saying they were "baseless" and that Xinjiang was now "stable and harmonious."
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