As the Chinese are willing to imprison over a million Uighurs in prison camps for the purposes of "re-education" - in reality cultural genocide - this latest horrific claim, marking a shift to what is in effect actual genocide, is alas only too believable.
China has been accused of displaying an “utter disregard for the sanctity of life” after a German researcher claimed Beijing had used mass sterilisation and forced abortions to suppress birth rates in its restive Uighur minority by as much as 80 per cent.
The report, based on leaked Chinese communist party (CCP) documents, suggested that up to 34 per cent of married Uighur women of reproductive age had been targeted with a campaign of sterilisation surgery and contraceptive implants.
The authorities in the province of Xinjian aimed to sterilise at least 80 per cent of women who were capable of having children in four southern districts, according to Adrian Zenz, senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism foundation in Washington DC.
China has dismissed the allegations as “baseless” but Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has begun rallying an international campaign to end the “horrific practices”....
Lord Patten of Barnes, the last British governor of Hong Kong, told Bloomberg that the campaign “arguably” amounted to genocide. [...]
Dr Zenz, who played a leading role in uncovering human rights abuses in the camps, has previously argued that this campaign was tantamount to “cultural genocide”.
His latest research argues that the government deliberately set out to reduce Uighur birth rates through intrauterine devices (IUDs), contraceptive tools that are inserted into the womb, and tubal ligation surgery, where the fallopian tubes are blocked in order to prevent a woman’s eggs from being fertilised.
One prefecture in Xinjiang allegedly intended to use this “family planning work” to almost entirely eradicate its birth rate, reducing the number of births from 11.45 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 1.05.
Birth rates in the two largest Uighur-majority prefectures of Xinjiang fell by 84 per cent from 2015 to 2018 and may have declined further since, according to Dr Zenz’s calculations.
More, from the BBC:
Mr Zenz's report was based on a combination of official regional data, policy documents and interviews with ethnic minority women in Xinjiang.
It alleges that Uighur women and other ethnic minorities are being threatened with internment in the camps for refusing to abort pregnancies that exceed birth quotas.
It also says women who had fewer than the two children legally permitted were involuntarily fitted with intra-uterine devices (IUDs), while others were coerced into receiving sterilisation surgeries.
"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 says.
According to Mr Zenz's analysis of the data, natural population growth in Xinjiang has declined dramatically in recent years, with growth rates falling by 84% in the two largest Uighur prefectures between 2015 and 2018 and declining further in 2019.
"This kind of drop is unprecedented, there's a ruthlessness to it," Mr Zenz told the Associated Press. "This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs."
Former detainees in internment camps in Xinjiang said they were given injections that stopped their periods, or caused unusual bleeding consistent with the effects of birth control drugs.
"Overall, it is likely that Xinjiang authorities are engaging in the mass sterilization of women with three or more children," the report said.
The Chinese deny it all, but then they denied the existence of the camps - of which there is now incontrovertible evidence.