China report says extremism has given women more autonomy

China has boasted of the ‘positives’ of its concentration camps, saying they’ve helped women realise they weren’t just ‘baby-making machines’.

A chilling new report from China has boasted about the “positives” of keeping citizens in concentration camps, claiming the measure helped Xinjiang Uighur women realise they weren’t just “baby-making machines”.

The Chinese government took what “Western media” described as “draconian measures” to slash birthrates among Uighur and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign last year to curb its Muslim population.

Women were forced to be sterilised or fitted with contraceptive devices, a report by China scholar Adrian Zenz in June 2020 found, while it’s believed about one million people have been detained over the past few years in what the Chinese state defines as “re-education” camps.

Instructions given to the camps, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2019, made it clear that they should be run as high security prisons with strict discipline, punishments and no escapes.

“This is an actionable piece of evidence, documenting a gross human rights violation,” China director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, said at the time.

“I think it’s fair to describe everyone being detained as being subject at least to psychological torture, because they literally don’t know how long they’re going to be there.”

While the nation initially denied the existence of the camps, it then defended them as a “necessary measure against terrorism” following separatist violence in the Xinjiang region.

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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. https://t.co/lykDhByEiL

— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) January 7, 2021

But the new study, published by the Xinjiang Development Research Centre on Thursday, claims the extremism has “incited people to resist family planning and its eradication had given Uighur women more autonomy when deciding whether to have children”.

“For a period of time, the penetration of religious extremism made implementing family planning policy in southern Xinjiang, including Kashgar and Hotan prefectures, particularly difficult,” China Daily, a publication owned by the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in a piece about the research centre’s “findings”.

“That led to rapid population growth in those areas as some extremists incited locals to resist family planning policy, resulting in the prevalence of early marriage and bigamy, and frequent unplanned births.”

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The Chinese report said the ‘eradication of extremism’ has ‘emancipated’ the minds of Uighur women.

It also denied that the population changes in Xinjiang were caused by “forced sterilisation”.

Rather, the process of “eradicating extremism” has “emancipated” the minds of Uighur women, the study claimed.

“Gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines,” it said.

“Women have since been striving to become healthy, confident and independent.”

In stark contrast, Mr Zenz’s report alleged Uighur women and other ethnic minorities who refused to abort pregnancies that exceeded birth quotas were threatened with internment in the camps.

“Since a sweeping crackdown starting in late 2016 transformed Xinjiang into a draconian police state, witness accounts of intrusive state interference into reproductive autonomy have become ubiquitous,” the report said.

“Overall, it is likely that Xinjiang authorities are engaging in the mass sterilisation of women with three or more children.”

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Chinese flags are seen on a road leading to a facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in China’s Xinjiang region. Picture: Greg Baker/AFP

Watchtowers near a re-education camp, where former detainees said they were subjected to forced IUDs and pregnancy prevention shots. Picture: Greg Baker/AFP

Former detainees told AP they were subjected to forced IUDs once in the detention camps, and what appeared to be pregnancy prevention shots, while others were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation.

“The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” University of Colorado Uighur expert Darren Byler told AP at the time.

“It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.”

Joanne Smith Finley, of the UK’s Newcastle University, told AP, however that it was “genocide, full stop”.

“It’s not immediate, shocking, mass-killing on the spot genocide, but it’s slow, painful creeping genocide,” she said.

“These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population.”