China is forcibly aborting, sterilizing hundreds of thousands in Xinjiang

Gulnar Omirzakh is the impoverished wife of a detained vegetable trader. After the birth of their third child, the Chinese government ordered her to get an IUD. She complied. Nevertheless, two years later, four military officials came to her door and gave her three days to pay a fine of $2,685 for having more than two children. If she could not pay, she would join her husband and a million others, locked in internment camps for having "too many children."

"God bequeaths children on you. To prevent people from having children is wrong," said Omirzakh, an ethnic minority Kazakh. "They [the Chinese Communist government] want to destroy us as a people," she stated, according to a compelling, investigative report by the Associated Press.

The Chinese Communist Party regards Omirzakh and people who share her views as religious extremists. CCP-backed scholars have identified "as a key obstacle [to the CCP's goals in Xinjiang] the religious belief that 'the fetus is a gift from God,'" according the AP Report. The CCP locks up these religious believers, mostly Muslim, in internment camps, where they will receive political and religious re-education, in an attempt "to purge them of their faith."

"The state [Chinese government] regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forced intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands," the AP Report continues.

"Hundreds of thousands might be an understatement, because there are 15 million Turkic minorities in Xinjiang," said German researcher Adrian Zenz, according to an ABC News analysis. Zenz released his own, heavily documented investigative report this week, published by the Jamestown Foundation think tank.

At the same time as it is forcibly aborting, sterilizing and detaining the Uyghur and Kazakh population, the CCP is encouraging births among the Han Chinese, including Han Chinese who have settled in Xinjiang. This practice may amount to "Han settler colonialism" or even cultural and ethnic genocide.

According to some of the ex-detainees interviewed by the AP:

- Women were given repeated health examinations in the internment camps. If they were found pregnant, they were forced to abort.

- A pregnant woman disappeared from the camp.

- Two others, terrified of the consequences of being pregnant in the camp, "got rid of their children on their own."

- Another witness saw "a new mother, still leaking breast milk, who did not know what had happened to her infant."

Forced sterilizations are also common:

Another former detainee said she was injected until she stopped having her period, and kicked repeatedly in the lower stomach during interrogations. She now can't have children and often doubles over in pain, bleeding from her womb.

Those who have too many children are not only interned in camps, but their children can be taken away and placed in an orphanage.

Regarding forced sterilization, the Zenz Report states: "In 2018, 80 percent of all new IUD placements in China were performed in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region only makes up 1.8 percent of the nation's population."

Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, stated: "The CCP's brutal use of forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and internment of families who have 'too many children' is shocking, heartbreaking, and outrageous. The targeting of those who believe that children are a gift from God constitutes religious persecution as well. No legitimate government would perpetrate such monstrous barbarism.

Littlejohn continued, "These reports demonstrate conclusively what I have been saying for years: coercive population control has continued under the Two Child Policy. What happened to the Han Chinese under the One Child Policy is happening to the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang now. I believe these atrocities constitute both genocide and crimes against humanity.

"The CCP must be held accountable," Littlejohn said. "We applaud Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's swift condemnation of these abhorrent practices and join in his demand that the CCP end these horrific practices in Xinjiang. We also demand the end of all coercive population control in China. Forced abortion and sterilization constitute savage violence against women."

Littlejohn urged readers to take action by signing a petition against forced abortion and watching a short video about forced abortion in China under the One Child Policy, since the same level of violence is now being used against the Uyghurs: Stop Forced Abortion, China's War on Women.

LINKS

China forces birth control on Uighurs to suppress population - https://apnews.com/e2674c069d46f6d5c9a3d3be40d612d4

Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP's Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang. Adrian Zenz, The Jamestown Foundation. June, 2020 - https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/

On China's Coercive Family Planning and Forced Sterilization Program in Xinjiang. Press statement, State Dept. June 29, 2020
www.state.gov/on-chinas-coercive-family-planning-and-forced-sterilization-program-in-xinjiang/

China imposes forced abortion, sterilization on Uyghurs, investigation shows - www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/china-forces-birth-control-on-uyghurs-to-suppress-population/12404912

Women's Rights Without Frontiers - www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/