‘Treated Like an Animal’: How China Is Preventing Uyghur Muslim Women From Giving Birth
On Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day, Zeteo shares a harrowing story of forced sterilization and explores the wider physical and psychological toll on Ugyhur women in Xinjiang.
Zumrat Dawut, a Uyghur mother of three from China’s Xinjiang region, has spent much of her adult life haunted by the Chinese government’s repression against her community. After enduring months in a state-run concentration camp, she emerged only to face another trauma: the loss of her ability to bear children.
Four months after she was released from the concentration camp in the summer of 2018, she was told she would be forcefully sterilized.
“It’s my body part, but I wasn’t in control,” Dawut said seven years later after immigrating to the US.
Dawut is part of a Muslim majority ethnic group known as the Uyghurs, native to China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, formerly known as East Turkestan.
Since as early as 2016, the Chinese government has been detaining Uyghurs in concentration camps it calls “vocational-education and training centers.” According to Human Rights Watch, Uyghurs were subjected to indoctrination, torture, and forced medical procedures. One hallmark of the government’s assault on Uyghurs is the prevention of births through forced sterilizations, forced abortions, and forced birth control, according to a UN report.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied accusations of forced sterilization, calling these claims, including those of Dawut, “rumors and lies fabricated by anti-China forces.” The government also denies well-documented cases of abuse, claiming the training centers ensure “the basic rights of students participating in the training are not violated, and strictly prohibits personal insults and abuse of students in any way.”
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group constitutes genocide under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. In 2021, the State Department called the persecution of Uyghurs a genocide, citing the forced prevention of births among other human rights abuses. Today marks Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day.
“For Uyghurs who have that predominantly Muslim identity, but also a very distinct culture and language, that is very difficult for the Chinese state to control,” said Julie Millsap, government relations manager for non-profit, No Business with Genocide. “Anything that can’t be controlled by the state is viewed as a threat.”