Chinese embassy in US releases repugnant statement on forced sterilisation of Uyghur women

The Chinese government on Thursday released an abhorrent message on Twitter in continued attempts to suppress, oppress, and dehumanise the Uyghur population residing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China.[1]

The tweet, originally available at this link,[2] was deleted by Twitter moderators after widespread anger aimed at the Chinese Embassy for its shockingly open declaration that China was making Uyghur women feel “emancipated” by its drive to eradicate “extremism” in the region of Xinjiang.

Due to the extensive coverage of the tweet posted on 7^th January by the official @ChineseEmbinUS account, the now-deleted tweet can be read in its entirety below.

“Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent.”[3]

The tweet cited an article in the China Daily news website. The article relies on a highly dubious report by the Xinjiang Development Research Center (XDRC), a think-tank that essentially serves as another mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the China Daily news organisation.[4]

The China Daily article states:

“The report on population change in Xinjiang published by the Xinjiang Development Research Center said extremism had incited people to resist family planning and its eradication had given Uygur women more autonomy when deciding whether to have children.”

“The changes were not caused by “forced sterilization” of the Uygur population, as repeatedly claimed by some Western scholars and politicians…” [4]

The sad irony in the phoney report by the XDRC is that although the Chinese government has classed Xinjiang as an “autonomous” region, it provides no such autonomy to women and their husbands who wish to have children.

This is so incredibly horrifying, beyond words. But know this: the only way China has the audacity to celebrate such viciousness against Muslims is because the global War on Terror has proven successful at legitimising outrageous violence in the name of liberation https://t.co/S88MSYg6JG

— Tarek Younis (@Tarek_Younis_) January 7, 2021

Forced sterilisation is well-documented in the region. The infamous tweet came as a result of the Chinese government attempting to portray highly valid research by Dr Adrian Zenz (a German researcher on Xinjiang and Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism non-profit organisation) as factually incorrect.

The Chinese government has shown through this particular tweet that it is not ashamed to openly admit to preventing Muslim women in Xinjiang from having children. Even so, the CCP hypocritically continues to deny it is implementing forced sterilisations in the Muslim-majority region.

An abridged version of a recent report by Zenz titled Sterilizations, IUDs, and Coercive Birth Prevention: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birth Rates in Xinjiang states:

“A sweeping crackdown starting in late 2016 transformed Xinjiang into a draconian police state (China Brief, September 21, 2017). While state control over reproduction has long been a common part of the birth control regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the situation in Xinjiang has become especially severe following a policy of mass internment initiated in early 2017 (China Brief, May 15, 2018) by officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

“In 2019, a growing number of witnesses testified to the fact that Xinjiang authorities were administering unknown drugs and injections to women in detention, forcibly implanting intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUDs) prior to internment, coercing women to accept surgical sterilization, and using internment as punishment for birth control violations (Washington Post, November 17, 2019; Associated Press, November 26, 2018: Washington Post, October 5, 2019). These initial claims were recently further corroborated by additional testimonies (Associated Press, June 28).”[5]

It cannot be made any clearer – the CCP continues to oppress the Uyghur people. In her Guardian opinion piece addressing the XDRC report as attempting to mask genocide as feminism, Arwa Mahdawi writes:

“You know those horrific mass detention camps in China? Turns out we were all completely wrong about them. The Chinese government isn’t oppressing its Muslim minority population, it’s simply rounded up over a million Uighurs in order to open their minds. It’s not forcibly sterilizing Uighur women, it’s just teaching them feminist theory.”

“I know that may sound a little hard to believe, but the Chinese government has firmly assured us that this is the case. On Thursday the Chinese embassy in the US tweeted a link to the findings of a report on demographics in Xinjiang, a predominantly Uighur area. Birth rates have dropped dramatically in recent years – something that many international observers believe is down to forced sterilizations. That’s nonsense, according to the report, which was created by a state-run thinktank, and reported on by China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by the publicity department of the Chinese Communist party. The real reason for declining Uighur birth rates is gender equality.”[6]

With the recent ban of Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram,[7] it can be hoped that in the year 2021, tech companies will take a harder stance against such obvious acts of immorality, incitation of violence, and brazen attempts by the likes of the CCP to whitewash genocide as “emancipation” and making women more “confident and independent”. [4]