China's Ethnic Cleansing of Uighur
On June 30, AFP mentioned that the Chinese Authorities has adopted a policy for population control in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and has been forcing sterilization on women of ethnic minorities such as the Uighur people, a report said on the previous day. Mr. Adrian Zenz, a German researcher who has accused the above mentioned policy of the Chinese Authorities, wrote up the report based on official local data, policy documents and hearing investigation of the women. In immediate response to this report, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded that China abolish the policy promptly. The report has disclosed that the Chinese Authorities warn and punish the women to be sent to the re-education camps if they refuse to have an abortion of designated number. What’s more, the women are forced to wear an intrauterine device (IUD) although they do not bear second child that the Chinese government has legislated. Some of the women who received the hearing investigation had reportedly had sterilization compulsorily.
According to the report, the rapid increasing rate of sterilization in 2016 was officially recorded in the northwest region of China, exceeding a national standard, and moreover the increasing population in counties where the ethnic minorities occupy majority of population there was lower than that of average of the Han people from 2017 to 2018.
Following this report, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on July 20 to add 11 Chinese companies to the U.S. Entity List on 22 of the same month. These companies are KTK Group (equipment for trains), OFilm Group (parts for smartphones of Apple and Huawei), associated companies of BGI (gene analysis) and so forth. Before this, due to eradication of the Uighur people, the Department of Commerce has already added to the List 37 companies and groups including Hikvision (video surveillance) since October 2019.
Besides, the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stated on July 21 that China’s treatment of the Uighur people is “unacceptable and we condemn them firmly,” and demanded that independent human rights observers visit the region.
Genocide through One-child policy
The eradication of the Uighur people reminds me of a human documentary film “One Child Nation” premiered in 2019. This sensational film on the China’s One-child policy adopted from 1979 to 2015 was awarded the Documentary Award at the U.S. Sundance Film Festival. The film directed by Ms. Nanfu Wang, a Chinese-born American, reveals many problems of the One-child policy with looking back at her life with her family in China under the policy.
In an interview with an eighty four years old midwife living in the village where Ms. Wang was born, the old lady was asked “How many mothers did you assist in childbirth?,” and then answered “I don’t remember, but I can recollect witnessing fifty to sixty thousand cases of abortions and operating more than twenty sterilizations per day. I saw many women who were dragged like a pig and forced to have an abortion.” Assuming that the midwife working in Ms. Wang’s small village witnessed fifty to sixty thousand cases of abortions, the inconceivable number in cities would have been recorded. Some of aborted babies were eight to nine months old, and they were abandoned with trash in sewerage or garbage dump while they were still alive.
Moreover, the One-child policy has brought about rise in the birthrate of boys other than sterilization and abortion. Because village people demand birth of male infants, they leave behind girls on the road or pick them up for human trafficking. As a result, due to the proportion of males to females, increasing men can not marry a woman. We can know about a reality that village people abduct or traffic women from China’s neighboring countries such as Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam and make them marry a Chinese man in local villages to bear a child.
Village people justified butchering the same ethnic group, their peers and their family with unrepentance, saying “That was a national policy and we had no other choice,” “Our country would have been ruined without the policy” and “We were suffering the poverty in those days and that was a national interest.”
The film unveils the negative aspects of the One-child policy one after another. They make me feel like my heart is going to fall apart when I see endless horrible atrocities in the film. (“One Child Nation” is currently broadcast on amazon prime video.)
Prevent China's Genocide against Uighur
The One-child policy was certainly the genocide, which is highly likely to be still committed against the Uighur people. This is “a serious crime against humanity” tantamount to the Holocaust by the Nazi.
At the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) held in October 2019, 23 countries including Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada announced a joint statement urging the Chinese government to end its mass arbitrary detentions of the Uighur people in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In response to the joint statement, 54 countries such as Russia and Pakistan protested the intervention in domestic affairs, which led to China’s argument for correctness of its policy with support from the outnumbering countries.
But the facts in Mr. Zenz’s report clearly reveal that the Uighur people are facing extreme crises and every country must not make a political issue of the Uighur problem. The United Nations must work together to demand that the Chinese government liberate the detained Uighur people promptly and stop its barbarous acts such as sterilization on women. The UN must send in independent human rights observers immediately so as to protect the ethnic minority.
