China subjects Uighurs to forced birth control
DHARAMSALA, 29 June: Having confined at least one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are in the detention centres in East Turkistan, commonly known as re-education camps, officially called Vocational Education and Training Centers by China, they are now subjected birth control to suppress their population.
“The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children,” reports the Associated Press.
The practise is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, the report added citing its investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor.
According to the report, the forced birth control that Uighurs and Muslims are subjected to since the last four years has prompted some experts to describe it as a form of “demographic genocide.”
Women for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are regularly subjected by the state “to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands.”
The malpractice by the Chinese authorities has has “transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years,” the report added.
“This kind of drop is unprecedented….there’s a ruthlessness to it. This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs,” Zenz, a leading expert in the policing of China’s minority regions was quoted as saying in the report.
In addition to constantly forbidding Uyghur Muslims from fasting and religious practices during Ramadan, Islam’s holy month of fasting, introspection and prayer, China has previously banned Uighurs from giving Muslim names to their children which China sees as overly religious or splittist.
