China is imposing draconian measures to slash birth rates among ethnic Uighurs as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, according to a new investigation. China’s foreign ministry spokesman responded on Monday by calling the news report “fake news”. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP news agency investigation based on government statistics, state documents, and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members, and a former detention-camp instructor.
The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide”.
China regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks and forces intrauterine devices, sterilisation, even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show.
The population-control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, AP found, with parents of three or more children ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines.
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