“The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups … may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Research for the OHCHR report included a review of documents, including China’s laws and policies, as well as 40 interviews with Uyghurs and other ethnic minority members with “first-hand knowledge” and a May visit to Xinjiang by Bachelet.
Interviews with the Uyghurs and others, who included 26 who had been detained, showed nearly all the detainees had been forced to receive injections and/or pills administered regularly. Some described sexual violence, including the rape primarily of women, according to the report.
Several females interviewed told OHCHR they were forced to have abortions or to have intrauterine devices inserted. The information it received “suggests that coercive measures are likely to have accompanied the strict enforcement of family planning policies post-2017 … and to have been a cause for the significant decreases in the birth rates in Xinjiang generally, and especially in predominantly Uyghur-populated areas,” the report said.
As in other regions of China, laws in Xinjiang “regulate religion in a detailed, intrusive and particularly controlling manner,” OHCHR reported. “Religious activities are allowed only in Government-approved locations, conducted by Government-accredited personnel, and on the basis of Government-approved teachings and publications.”
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The CCP’s oppressive practices in Xinjiang that have been reported by news outlets have included a high-tech surveillance system that has obtained genetic data on many residents. It is estimated more than 1 million Uyghurs, and maybe as many as 3 million, have been detained in “re-education” camps. Life in the camps also has resulted in coercive organ harvesting, according to some reports.
The ERLC has called for adoption of U.S. policies to combat China’s repression of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.
President Biden signed into law in December 2021 the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, ERLC-endorsed legislation that prohibits products made with forced labor in Xinjiang from being introduced into the American market. In June, Leatherwood expressed his “profound concerns” in a letter to Biden that a new White House order could be used to allow into the United States solar cells and modules produced by the Uyghurs under forced-labor conditions.
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.
