Policies against the Uyghur Women - Genocidal Intent

Policies against the Uyghur Women: Genocidal Intent

Policies against the Uyghur Women: Genocidal Intent

China’s gender-based policies, including policies to prevent births, state-sponsored forced marriages, forced labor, and the policy of appointing male Han Chinese cadres to Uyghur homes, as well as mass rape camps which we discuss in this article, expose China’s intent to commit genocide as a direct outcome of its colonialism. All of these acts committed by China’s government today are self-evident, and the results are predictably destructive.

Behind these actions, we address the systematic character of the planning, policymaking, and repetitive implementation of these policies, which are all directed toward the same final outcome. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) mentioned how “existing plans would be strong evidence of the specific intent requirement for the crime of genocide.” While the Chinese government’s plans do not explicitly advertise genocide but ² are instead couched in the language of re-education, employment skill training, pair up relatives for ethnic unity, family planning, development, and the like, their destructive effect is plainly evident. It is achieved by planning, budgeting, and allocating resources and personnel to enforce and carry out these plans. The Chinese government openly insists upon these policies as one hundred

¹ All interviews conducted by the first author were confidential. To protect the interviewees’ identities, the author and 1 select interviewees have mutually agreed to use aliases (indicated with an asterisk ) and/or redact their last names (indicated with an obelisk †). Where no special symbols appear, interviewees’ original names were retained.

² The Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Trial Judgement, May 21, 1999, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), ICTR-95-1-T, para. 276, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.refworld.org/cases,ICTR,48abd5760.html.

percent correct and plan to continue them. Before discussing the root causes of China’s genocidal ³ intent, we examine each policy aspect, laying out the evidence for how these policies are repeatedly implemented and have devastating consequences.

Horrific Outcome of the so-called Family Planning Policy: Draining Reproductivity

Perhaps most striking is how the Chinese government is violating the Genocide Convention’s Article 2(d) through measures to prevent the children of Uyghur and other Turkic women from being born. Women have been the target of these policies for many years. Newer policies not only include previous measures such as sterilization and enforced abortions under the Chinese family planning policy, but also mass rape and sexual torture in the new concentration camp system built from 2017 onward; state-sponsored inter-racial forced marriages of Uyghur women to Han Chinese men, as well as the state placing Han Chinese male cadres (Party and government staff) in an innumerable Uyghur homes, violating the privacy of Uyghur women. Forced labor camps and factories also segregate Uyghur women and men in different places, thus serving the same purpose. All of these are acts of genocide which meet the Convention’s definition under article 2(b) and 2(d).⁴

Direct measures imposed by the Chinese government to restrict the number of births in the Uyghur population has a long history. It is thus not surprising that numerous new eyewitness accounts of forced sterilization have surfaced, and a new birth control policy has been imposed on Uyghur women. Currently, every married Uyghur woman who lives in East ⁵ Turkistan and who has had no child or only one child has directly experienced either forced IUD insertion or sterilization.

Uyghur women who evade these rules and have more than two children, which is the maximum number allowed, are punished heavily.⁶ Since 2017, this practice has intensified— even though it was relaxed for the Han Chinese. According to the leaked Karakash List, having illegal children is the most common reason for the detention of Uyghur women in Karakash county.⁷

³ Chris Buckley, “Brushing Off Criticism, China’s Xi Calls Policies in Xinjiang ‘Totally Correct,’” The New York Times, 3 September 26, 2020, accessed September 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/world/asia/xi-jinpingchina-xinjiang.html.

⁴ United Nations (UN), General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of 4 Genocide, December 9, 1948 (UN Doc. A/RES/260(III)).

⁵ Uyghur Research Institute, Genocide in East Turkistan (Ankara: Uyghur Research Institute, February 2019), 34, accessed 5 May 19, 2020, https://www.uysi.org/en/?p=774; Gulchehra Hoja, “Female Detainees at Xinjiang Internment Camps Face Sterilization, Sexual Abuse: Camp Survivor,” Radio Free Asia, October 30, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/abuse-10302019142433.html; Peter Stubley, “Muslim Women ‘Sterilised’ In China Detention Camps, Say Former Detainees,” The Independent, August 12, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-sterilisation-women-internmentcamps-xinjiang-a9054641.html; Amie Ferris-Rotman, Aigerim Toleukhan, Emily Rauhala, and Anna Fifield, “China Accused of Genocide Over Forced Abortions of Uighur Muslim Women as Escapees Reveal Widespread Sexual Torture,” The Independent, October 6, 2019, accessed May 23, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-women-abortions-sexual-abuse-genocide-a9144721.html.

⁶Kelbinur Tursun (victim, currently residing in Turkey), video interview with author, January 17, 2019. Additional 6 excerpts: “China implemented forced sterilization on Uyghur women to prevent births. I, myself, had five children hidden from Chinese forces; 3 of them are illegal if they find out. To save my 6th baby, I escaped to Turkey in 2016 with my youngest child. The Chinese government arrested my husband and sentenced him to 10 years after I escaped, just because we didn’t kill our babies. Despite my parents’ pleading the Chinese forces, they also took away my 4 children that I left behind. No one knows their whereabouts. Just a few days ago, I recognized my daughter Ayisha in a Douyin video that a Chinese worker posted from Hoten’s orphanage camp. She was three years old when I left, and 6 years old now. My home is in Kashgar city and she is in another city’s orphanage camp right now. She was separated from her siblings and sent to another city. I don’t know what happened to my other kids.”

⁷ Adrian Zenz, “The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing’s Internment Drive in Xinjiang,” Journal of Political 7 Risk 8, no. 2 (February 2020), accessed April 30, 2021, https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/.

Uyghur women are made to undergo gynecological examinations and forced to take birth control medication, have IUDs inserted, or be sterilized, both in the concentration camps as well as outside the camps. Adrian Zenz’s research on Chinese documents and statistical data ⁸ on birth rates in 2019 reveals that 97 percent of women of child-bearing age in Kashgar and Hotan city in southern East Turkistan could not or would not get pregnant and deliver a child.⁹ A further new report describes the extreme drop in East Turkistan birthrates as worse than the declines during the Syrian civil war and the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia.¹⁰

The mass sterilization of women is not limited to the southern part of East Turkistan. Qelbinur Sidik, a resident of Ürümqi, located in the northern part of East Turkistan, shared her experience of how she fell victim to the policy of so-called birth control measures with long term effectiveness. She was forced to get an IUD in April 2017. However, her doctor (who was also a friend) helped her secretly remove the device to save her life after her tubal ligation became severely infected. In April 2019, during the enforced medical check-up for all Uyghur women, she was forcibly sterilized along with many other Uyghur women in the Changliyuan clinic in Ürümqi, even though she only has one child. Zumret Dawut, another camp survivor, ¹¹ also testified that she had been forcibly sterilized along with five other women in her neighborhood clinic in Ürümqi after her third child was born illegally. All female camp ¹² survivors and witnesses said that every woman, including unmarried young women, in the camps experienced either heavy bleeding or completely stop menstruating after being forcibly medicated on a daily basis and injected once every two weeks with a mysterious liquid.¹³

Adrian Zenz’s analysis of family planning statistics between spring 2017 and autumn 2018 for 12 villages and the urban district in Kok Gumbez, in Kuqa county (Aksu Prefecture) also showed that 73.5% of married Uyghur women of child-bearing age were forced to undergo IUD insertions.¹⁴ According to Zenz’s research, natural population growth among Uyghurs in East Turkistan declined dramatically in the two largest Uyghur prefectures, with growth rates falling by 84% between 2015 and 2018. As he noted in his report, “for 2020, one Uyghur region set an unprecedented near-zero birth target: a mere 1.05 per mill[ion] compare[d] to 19.66 per mill[ion] in 2018.” Chinese state media acknowledged that the birth rate, mortality rate, and ¹⁵ natural population growth rate in East Turkistan dropped from 22.55%, 7.69%, and 14.86%

⁸ Qelbinur Sidik (victim and witness, currently awaiting political asylum in The Netherlands), phone interview with 8 author, September 3, 2020; Zumret Dawut (Chinese concentration camp survivor, currently awaiting political asylum in US), phone interview with author, September 3, 2021; Ayda† (Chinese concentration camp survivor— currently residing in Kazahkstan), phone interview with author, September 3, 2020.

⁹ Adrian Zenz, Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in 9 Xinjiang (Washington D.C.: The Jamestown Foundation, June 2020), accessed September 4, 2020, https:// jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghurbirthrates-in-xinjiang/.

¹⁰ Nathan Ruser and James Leibold, Family De-Planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-Rates in 10 Xinjiang (Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), May 12, 2021), accessed May 12, 2021, https:// www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-birthrates-xinjiang.

¹¹ Sidik, interview. First mentioned in note 8.

¹² Dawut, interview. First mentioned in note 8.

¹³ Ekrani Uyghur YouTube video 20:37:00 uploaded February 10 2021, accessed March 25, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijxmwpK01Fk; Afroze Fatima Zaidi, “China is Forcibly Sterilising Muslim Women in Internment Camps, According to Former Detainees,” The Canary, August 17, 2019, accessed March 23, 2021, https://www.thecanary.co/global/2019/08/17/china-is-forcibly-sterilisingmuslim-women-in-internment-camps-according-to-former-detainees/; Sidik, interview; Dawut, interview; Ayda†, interview; see also Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Rozenn Morgat, “‘Our Souls are Dead:’ How I Survived a Chinese ‘ReEducation Camp’ for Uighurs,” The Guardian, January 12, 2021, accessed January 28, 2021, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjiang-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji?CMP=share_btn_tw.

¹⁴ Zenz, Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control, 13.

¹⁵ Ibid., 2.

respectively in 1978 to 10.69%, 4.56%, and 6.13% respectively in 2018. Notably, both the ¹⁶ Uyghur population’s fertility rate and natural growth rate declined significantly in 2018.¹⁷

Despite the well-known consequence of draining Uyghur population, the Chinese government has persisted in applying these birth control policies against Uyghur women.

State Sponsored Interracial Marriage Policy Against the Uyghur Women

The genocidal reduction of the Uyghur population has also intensified through China’s interracial marriage policy. According to China’s fifth hukou (household) census statistics in East Turkistan, in 2000, interracial marriages between Han Chinese and Uyghurs made up only 1.05% of all marriages. China has not published any further interracial marriage statistics, but ¹⁸ based on social media news and Chinese government news and documents, we estimate that interracial marriages between Uyghurs and Han Chinese have increased dramatically since 2017. Further, the majority of these marriages are between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women, and are very rarely the other way around. Under the prevalent patriarchal system, these women will become mothers of Han Chinese children, not Uyghur; so, as a policy, these promoted marriages further accelerate the intended destruction of the Uyghur people “as such” (as expressed in the Genocide Convention).

The Chinese government has used many incentives to promote these interracial marriage policy objectives. In August 2014, China announced a reward of 10,000 yuan annually for five years to newly married Han Chinese-Uyghur couples. They also announced a 3,000 yuan reward if the couples’ children enter vocational school, a 5,000 yuan reward if their children enter university, and an extra 15 marks added to their children’s university exam.¹⁹

In 2014, the Chinese government increased the reward encouraging Han Chinese men to emigrate to East Turkistan and marry Muslim women to 3.33 hectares of land and a 70,000 yuan (estimated USD $10,847) bonus. Even with such incentives, interracial marriages are still ²⁰ not common in East Turkistan. However, beginning in 2017, following China’s incarceration of millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps (and especially Uyghur men), there was a dramatic increase in the number of social media posts and Chinese state media news reports about interracial marriages between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women. Based on social media comments, Uyghur women and their entire families have been threatened with the heavy punishment of concentration camp internment if they refuse to marry Han Chinese men.

¹⁶ Li Shao Xia, “An Analysis Report on Population Change in Xinjiang,” Global Times, January 7, 2021, accessed February 16 24, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1212073.shtml.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Li Shao Xia 李绍霞, “Xīnjiāng zú jì tōnghūn de diàochá yǔ fēnxī: 新疆族际通婚的调查与分析” [Investigation and Analysis of Cross-Ethnic Intermarriage in Xinjiang], Creaders.net (blog), May 9, 2014, accessed May 23, 2020, http://blog.creaders.net/u/3328/201405/181046.html.

¹⁹ Huang Anwei 黄安伟, “Xīnjiāng gǔlì mín hàn tōnghūn míhé mínzú máodùn: 新疆⿎励民汉通婚弥合民族⽭盾” [Xinjiang Encourages Marriage between the Han and Uyghurs to Bridge Ethnic Conflicts], New York Times, September 3, 2014, accessed May 23, 2020, https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140903/c03xinjiang/.

²⁰ Liu Minghuan 刘明焕, “Xīnjiāng kuòdà hànhuà zhèngcè hànrén qǔ jiāng nǚ kě dé 50 mǔ tián jí 7 wàn yuán xiànjīn: 新疆扩⼤汉化政策汉⼈娶疆⼥可得50亩⽥及7万元现⾦” [Xinjiang Expands Sinocization: Han People Marry Xinjiang Women Get 50 Mu Fields And 70,000 Yuan In Cash], New Tang Dynasty Television: 新唐电视台, October 30, 2019, accessed May 24 2020, https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2019/10/30/a102696368.html.

Image 1. Screenshot 1, image courtesy of the author.

Image 2. Screenshot 2, image courtesy of the author.

Image 3. Screenshot 3, image courtesy of the author.

Annotated screen shots show communications with a Uyghur female student in Beijing, whose first name is Menzire. The author’s translation is as follows:

Screen shot 1:

A: Salam, it is so hard for me to add you. I am writing from school in inland China. My dad was taken. And my mom [was] left at home. When I [came] back home for vacation, our Chinese “relatives” came and kept asking me to marry his brother.

R: What did you say?

Screen shot 2:

R: What did you say?

A: I was scared. I told him that I needed to finish school. School will finish this summer. What should I do?

R: Say no, he can’t do anything.

Screen shot 3:

A: What if they take my mom, too? They will say I [am] harm[ing] the ethnic unity,..an ideological problem. They may ask the whole family to go for re-education.

R: What if you tell them that you found a job and do not want to return home?

A: Is there any international law that you can use to help me without revealing my name?

R: We might need the help of a lot of girls testifying, to do that.

A: That is too dangerous, they will eat me alive if I do that.

Local Chinese work units and social security workers support Han Chinese men and often attempt to convince Uyghur women to marry these men even if the women refuse to do so of their own volition. It is not possible to determine the prevalence of such marriages as ²¹ China conceals national interracial marriage statistics. However, the question is, if these interracial marriages are voluntary and not state-sponsored rape, then why has there been such a dramatic increase in interracial marriage between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women since 2017 when between one to three million Uyghurs were forced into concentration camps? We know that more men than women have been sent to these concentration camps, and many women may have no choice but to marry Han Chinese men when there are no Uyghur men left to marry.

The most convincing reason could be fear of being sent to one of these camps. Hundreds of Uyghur women report having married Han Chinese men in TikTok videos, on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, and on other apps, as well as in news reports seen on Chinese government websites, all of which suggests this has become a shocking and devastating new reality for the Uyghurs. In one of the Tik Tok videos, an Uyghur woman from ²² Yarkand said:

We do not love each other. I married a Chinese guy to get my brother released from a concentration camp. My brother had been arrested because he had failed to participate once in a flag-raising ceremony. He was released after I married the Chinese guy but he had been mentally harmed and disabled. And my husband married me to get government money. Now

²¹ Darren Byler, “Uyghur Love in a Time of Interethnic Marriage,” SupChina, August 7, 2019, accessed May 24, 2020, 21 https://supchina.com/2019/08/07/uyghur-love-in-a-time-of-interethnic-marriage/.

²²“Xinjiang guniang wei sha bu neng tong hanzu nanzi jiehun: 新疆姑娘, 为啥不能同汉族男⼦结婚？来听下当地⼈怎么说” [Why Uyghur Women Cannot Marry Han Chinese], QQ Video News, November 27, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020, https://v.qq.com/x/page/f3026lh9hej.html.

we have a child, but he has a Chinese lover. He hates me and always hits my head.²³

In practice, as seen in both Uyghur and Chinese patrilineal culture, forcing women to marry Han Chinese men means their future children will not belong to their mothers’ ethnic group. This represents one more measure intended to prevent Uyghur children from being born and reducing the Uyghur population as a result. Further, we believe the colonial ideology of the Chinese government entails the belief that their domination of women means to not only dominate the land but also the entire colonized people (more on this below). This could explain why there are very few interracial marriages between Uyghur men and Han Chinese women, and most Chinese government and social propaganda targets Uyghur women rather than men.

To disguise their state-sponsored forced marriage policy, the Chinese government also established dating services around various East Turkistan cities. The sole function of these services is to find Uyghur women for Han Chinese men. All of these dating services are intrinsically political, as they are linked directly to, and guided by the Chinese government. One of their video advertisements in Kashgar city, published in Uyghur and translated below, is another example of how the Chinese government treats Uyghur women as commodities—it refers explicitly to government policy and includes an implicit threat:

Thank you to the party and the government! In order to support our government’s policy of increase Uyghur and Han Chinese marriage, we need 100 Uyghur women urgently! It is important for the ethnic unity between the Uyghur and the Han Chinese! Please call us and get counseling. Anyone is welcome to introduce friends and family members. Contact number: 17699989766.²⁴

As a result, the privilege and advantage of freely obtaining Uyghur women, as a wife and as a commodity, give Han Chinese men an ideologically framed image through which to view Uyghur women and, particularly how to use and value them.

Several other videos found by Uyghur activists on Chinese social media show how Chinese men try to attract Han Chinese settlers to the region. These videos contain phrases such as: “Do you want Uyghur beauties? Come, I’ll arrange it for you tonight,” and “Do you want to marry Uyghur girls? They can eat pork. They could not eat it before, but they can eat it now. Don’t worry about [the] cultural differences.” These videos include both government- ²⁵ sponsored propaganda videos as well as videos distributed by Han Chinese individuals. This is often accompanied by a stream of insults, used as a tool to humiliate, destroy, and assert power over the Uyghurs.

²³ Zumrat Dawut, “Conversation of Uyghur Women who are Married to Han Chinese in Tik Tok Video,” Facebook, 23 November 13, 2020, 2:38 p.m., accessed, May 18, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/100034398679054/posts/ 397615751395044/d=n.

²⁴ Ashimu Kashijalian 阿西姆·卡什加⾥安, “Zhongguo shipin guanggao huyu baiming Weiwuer nuxing kuai jia Hanren: 24 中国视频⼴告呼吁百名维吾尔⼥性快嫁汉⼈” [Chinese Video Advertisement Urgently Need 100 Uyghur Women to Marry Han Chinese Men], Voice of America, August 22, 2020, accessed August 22, 2020, https:// www.voachinese.com/a/china-xinjiang-inter-marriage-20200821/5553607.html.

²⁵ Doam (@doamuslims), “Chinese Official Interrogates Uyghur Muslim Girl,” Twitter, April 2, 2019, 12:02 p.m., accessed 25 May 15, 2021, https://twitter.com/doamuslims/status/1113109430177075200; Arslan Hidayat (@arslan-hidayat), “Uyghur Girl Publicly Pimped,” Twitter, May 13, 2020, 8:06 p.m., accessed May 15, 2021, https://twitter.com/ arslan_hidayat/status/1260723117682561025.23

Slavery of Uyghur Women in China’s Forced Labor Camps

Since 2006, the Chinese government has forced every Uyghur household to send one person to perform factory work in inland China, as shengyu laodong (excess labor force). This policy has ²⁶ been intensified since 2017, under the guise of a new so-called “poverty alleviation” policy. Three important characteristics are concealed within this policy:

Mainly young Uyghur women are recruited for factory work outside of East Turkistan and are thus separated from the male population of their own people.
All the workers are forcibly sent away to inland China, with those married separated from their husbands and children.
They live under massive surveillance with no freedom of movement or the right to return to their homeland.

China’s government published a White Paper in September 2020 claiming that every year from 2014 to 2019, the average annual relocation of surplus rural labor amounted to more than 2.76 million people, of whom nearly 1.68 million—or over 60 percent—were in southern East Turkistan, which is mainly populated with Uyghurs. This indicates that 6.72 million²⁷ Uyghurs were relocated or sent to forced labor during these four years. Even though the White Paper did not mention the gender of these workers, claiming that they were voluntary and not forced, several sources—including witness testimonies, Uyghur sources, and western media investigative reports—proved that these workers are mostly women. The proportion of male Uyghurs in prison and detention, in contrast, constitutes an overwhelming majority. Based on local Chinese government data from 2017 and 2018 analyzed by Adrian Zenz, the share of all male adults in concentration camps in the document sample was 9.2 times higher than arrested female adults, which could explain why the number of Uyghur women is much higher in ²⁸ forced labor.

The Uyghur women sent to factories across inland China could well be providing services to global companies such as Volkswagen, Dell, General Motors, Cisco, Calvin Klein, among others. According to a March 2020 Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, at least 80,000 Uyghurs, mostly women, have been transferred; the women are either sent directly ²⁹ from Uyghur cities and villages, or by way of the concentration camps. They are not allowed to return home when they get sick even if they have finished their job contract. One factory ³⁰ manager in Shandong Province told Bitter Winter magazine that Uyghurs must work for one year before they are eligible to go home to visit relatives. Even if family members die, they cannot go home without permission. For those who have worked for more than one year and were fortunate enough to be granted permission to go home to visit relatives, if do not come

²⁶ Uyghur Human Rights Project, China: Transfer of 400,000 Young Uyghur Women into Eastern China (Brussels: Human 26 Rights Without Frontiers International, June 19, 2008), accessed September 21, 2020, http://www.davidkilgour.com/2008/Jun_20_2008_01.htm.

²⁷ The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang, (white paper, The People’s Republic of China, September 17, 2020), accessed January 28, 2021, http:// english.www.gov.cn/archive/whitepaper/202009/17/content_WS5f62cef6c6d0f7257693c192.html.

²⁸ Adrian Zenz, “‘Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts:’ Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and 28 Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign,” Journal of Political Risk 7, no. 11 (November 2019), accessed May 15, 2021, https://www.jpolrisk.com/wash-brains-cleanse-hearts/.

²⁹ Vicky Xiuzhong Xu et al., Uyghurs For Sale: “Re-Education,” Forced Labour, and Surveillance Beyond Xinjiang (Australian 29 Strategic Policy Institute, March 1, 2020), accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale.

³⁰ Li Mingxuan 李明轩, “Dàpī xīnjiāng wéizú rén bèi qiángzhì sòng wǎng nèidì gōngchǎng wàichū xū dài dìngwèi shǒu 30 huán: ⼤批新疆維族⼈被強制送往內地⼯廠外出須戴定位⼿環” [A Large Number of Uyghurs in Xinjiang were Forcibly Sent to Mainland Factories, Wearing Tracking Bracelets], Bitter Winter, March 9, 2020, accessed May 25, 2020, https://zh.bitterwinter.org/new-re-education-of-uyghurs-forced-labor-outside-xinjiang/.

back within the stipulated time, they are forcibly returned and punished. If they do not come back, they will be put in an education transformation camp, or prison.³¹

“I was detained in a concentration camp for two years and it is one year now that I am in a labor camp. It is ok if they don’t pay me, but I am happy if they allow me to see my children once in a while. I can do everything they want, but my kids are in a boarding school and I couldn’t see them when I came home,” explained Aydin, who finally received permission to visit her own home for the first time after three years. She revealed this information to her friend overseas in a secret video conversation, in which she displayed the police tracking bracelet on her arm. For her safety, we decided to publish the photo of the bracelet, but not the video.

Image 4. Tracking bracelet used to control forced labor workers, image courtesy of the author.

Many educated women are also sent to low-skill slave labor camps and separated from their children and homes. Dilnur Idris, an Uyghur nurse, on her release from a concentration camp in May 2019, was sent to a slave labor textile factory to do unpaid low-skill heavy work. She sent a brave message to her sister Gulnur Idris in Melbourne, saying: “I may never have a chance to get out, or contact you again. Please stand up for me!”³²

A young ethnic Kazakh man, Yelisin Erkin, who did administration work in Ghulja City’s Chapchal forced labor camp in East Turkistan in 2015 testified about how the women were forced to work in these camps.

70 percent of the workers are women between 16–45 years old working in the factory designated as a forced labor camp in Chapsal County. These women are never allowed to go home and see their children, husbands, or other family members unless they have emergency issues, and get permission from

³¹ Ibid.

³² ABC News In-Depth, “How China is Creating the World’s Largest Prison: Four Corners,” YouTube video, 00:36:39– 00:38:30, uploaded on July 16, 2019, accessed May 15, 2021, https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=taxd1Ht_J8.

the factory owner. Monthly salaries range between $5.88 to $61.90—barely enough for their hygiene expenses—despite being forced to work 14 hours every day.³³

An unpublished video secretly taken in the White Rose factory in Tianjin 13 years ago and preserved by the author also revealed similar evidence. This video explains how Uyghur women aged 16–24 are forced to go to inland China for unpaid factory work. “If we refuse, we have to pay a fine of 3000-5000 yuan, and they will destroy our houses with a bulldozer,” said the women in the video.³⁴

A group of young Uyghur women who had been forced to come to work at a telephone company in Hubei province in central China in the first quarter of 2019 said the following to her cousin in Europe over the telephone in 2021. She disappeared the next day and her cousin not been able to contact her again.

They said we could go back home when they bring new workers. When I arrived, they chose some women from among the previous workers, and the government decided these women could return home. After these women left, we never heard about them. We don’t know where they [have] sent them. Please help me! They have selected several of us today. I am amongst them. I was separated from my baby daughter three years ago. I don’t know where she is right now. I don’t know where they will take us tomorrow. Please help!³⁵

Not Only Mass Gang Rapes but Sexual Torture

Similar to the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, Uyghur and other Turkic women have been targeted through mass rape as a tool of genocide, which Chinese state policy facilitates through the newly built women’s concentration and forced labor camps. A recent camp survivor, Tursunay Ziyawudun, 39, described what happened to her as follows:

I was bleeding heavily after they kicked my stomach so badly in the interrogation room. I didn’t know what these dimly redlit rooms were for when I passed by, going all the way to the interrogation room. I learned later it was the rooms prepared for the rape and torture of detainees.³⁶

She, herself, was gang-raped, sexually tortured, and mutilated when she was taken to those dark rooms.

There were 12 women in my cell, each one of them, mostly young girls and aged under 40, randomly taken out at night. When they came back, they looked as if their spirit had vanished. I didn’t imagine sexual torture and rape until they took me there. I thought those women who were taken out at night were taken for interrogation and physically tortured.³⁷

³³Yelisin Erkin (eye-witness, currently awaiting political asylum in Ukraine), phone interview with author, January 25, 33 2021.

³⁴Quote was from a private video, provided by East Turkistan Information Center. This video is not published publicly 34 to protect the identities of the forced labor workers in the video.

³⁵ Ibrahim† (Second-hand witness), interview with author, March 28, 2021.

³⁶ Tursunay Ziyawudun (Chinese concentration camp survivor), phone interview with author, March 25, 2021.

³⁷ Ibid.

Another camp survivor, Gulbahar Jelilova, told the author: “The young Chinese guy sexually assaulted me in the interrogation room. I begged him: ‘Don’t you have a mother?’ He banged my head to the table and said: ‘Don’t you dare compare yourself to my mom! You are not human to me! You cannot compare yourself to any human!’” Both Gulbahar Jelilova and ³⁸ camp survivor, Zumret Dawut, confirmed the use of gang rape in concentration camps.³⁹ Tursunay Ziyawudun added:

Each time, the same tall Chinese man with a blue suit and shining shoes came with his other followers with military camouflage uniforms. They talked to each other. From their accents, I learned they are Han Chinese. (…) I heard one of these Chinese men say: ‘She is going to die. She is bleeding too much!’ when they inserted an electric baton in my private parts and tortured me, like pulling all of my organs one by one, chopping my body into a thousand pieces. Another one said: ‘So what?!’ The third man said: ‘No difference! Just destroy her womb!’ I didn’t get it why they hate women’s wombs.⁴⁰

The masked men who raped and sexually tortured her were likely Chinese government officials and soldiers who represent the Chinese state.

Like many other detainees, Tursunay did not know what her crime was when she was arrested. “When they brought me to the concentration camps from the detention center, they gave me a list of papers and forced me to choose one of the crimes they listed,” she said. She shared what she remembered from the list as follows:

wearing a long dress;
wearing a hijab [head scarf/head covering];
shaved body hair;
praying;
having a Muslim name;
traveled abroad;
participated in a religious nikah [Muslim wedding] ceremony
having a traditional handheld vessel at home that contains water to assist in bathroom hygiene;
having a religious friend;
your father is an Imam [Islamic religious leader];
participated in a party and there was a religious person at the party;
contacted someone overseas by phone;
having an illegal child outside of the government plan.⁴¹

“They had a long list; I don’t remember all,” she said. “I chose the one that said ‘traveled abroad,’ because my husband was a Kazakhstan national and I went to Kazakhstan before. Many people do not even fit into the list; they didn’t have any fault[s], but they have to choose.”⁴²

³⁸. Gulbahar Jelilova, phone interview with author, March 24, 2021.

³⁹Dawut, interview.

⁴⁰Ziyawudun, interview, March 25, 2021. First mentioned in note 36.

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴²Ibid.

Tursunay had surgery in the United States after being released due to the activism of her Kazakh husband and diplomatic pressure on China from Kazakhstan. Doctors removed her badly injured uterus due to severe medical risks. She cannot be a mother anymore, but she said the surgery helped her since she feels like she removed something scary and dirty from her life. “They will make you hate to be a women,” she said. “I feel a little better and feel safe after doctors removed my womb in the US, because it is something that reminds me, every second, of those horrible and disgusting days.”⁴³

The ICTR noted that “[r]ape and sexual violence also constitute genocide in the same way as any other act, as long as they were committed with intent to destroy a particular group targeted as such.” The tribunal also concluded rape and sexual violence were one of the worst ⁴⁴ ways of inflicting physical and mental harm on women. Clearly, the Chinese government’s ⁴⁵ actions constitute a serious violation of Article 2(b) of the Genocide Convention.

In many cases, systematic mass rape in China’s concentration camps is intentional, conducted from the top-down, and centrally directed as part of the genocide plan to destroy the Uyghur people and nation. China’s intention to destroy the whole Uyghur people and nation by destroying Uyghur women and their dignity is evident through the horrific torture and systematic mass rape in Chinese concentration camps, as confirmed by several victims and eyewitnesses.⁴⁶

‘Pair Up and Become Family’ Policy: Invaders in the Uyghur family

The Chinese government’s policy of specifically targeting Uyghur and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan is done through several means, including with experimental AI technology, observing each person’s movements with digital spying techniques such as face and voice recognition cameras and phone spyware, collecting blood types and DNA samples from entire segments of the Uyghur population, as well as sending more than one million Han Chinese male cadres into Uyghur homes, as human spies, to sleep over for one or two weeks every month, monitoring household members for possible infractions. All of these tactics induce responses ranging from anxiety to outright terror, severely damaging the Uyghurs’ mental health.⁴⁷ Uyghur women have been particularly targeted as a vulnerable victim of this policy.

In many Uyghur families, Han Chinese men dominate the Uyghur women they are paired up with them while male Uyghur household members have been detained elsewhere. Many instances of sexual harassment and rape have been reported during these male Han Chinese sleepovers with Uyghur Muslim families. Zumret Dawut, who was finally able to ⁴⁸ escape to the United States, stated:

⁴⁴ United Nations, “Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal Pronounces Guilty Verdict in Historic Genocide Trial,” press release, September 2, 1998, accessed May 15, 2021, https://www.un.org/press/en/1998/19980902.afr94.html.

⁴⁵See in particular the article abstract in Jonathan M. H. Short, “Sexual Violence as Genocide: The Developing Law of the International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 8, no. 2 (2003), accessed May 15, 2021, https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol8/iss2/5.

⁴⁶Matthew Hill et al., “‘Their Goal is to Destroy Everyone:’ Uighur Camp Detainees Allege Systematic Rape,” BBC News, February 2, 2021, accessed February 4, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071; Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius, The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps, trans. Caroline Waight (Melbourne: Scribe, 2021).

⁴⁷Alexandra Ma, “China is Reportedly Sending Men to Sleep in the Same Beds as Uighur Muslim Women while their 47 Husbands are in Prison Camps,” Business Insider, November 4, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https:// www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-monitor-home-shared-bed-report-2019-11.

⁴⁸Peter Goff, “‘Become Family:’ China Sends Officials to Stay with Xinjiang Minorities,” The Irish Times, December 17, 48 2019, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/become-family-china-sendsofficials-to-stay-with-xinjiang-minorities-1.4118327.

Government workers appoint those Han Chinese to sleep over in every Uyghur household, under the program of ‘Pair Up and Become Family.’ They do not care if there are any men in the household or not, an extra bed or not. They do not allow us to ask any personal information about those Chinese guests. We do not know what kind of people they are or their medical or social or criminal history.⁴⁹

Qelbinur Sidik, who recently found refuge in the Netherlands, said: “I was threatened, intimidated, and attacked with verbal sexual harassment in front of my husband many times in my own home by the Han Chinese sleepover men. Even though I am free right now, I constantly suffer from nightmares, and anger issues.”⁵⁰

Zumret Dawut also described how a 20-year-old single Han Chinese male “relative” of her 12-year-old daughter, matched by the Chinese government, became a huge problem for her before she was eventually able to leave for Pakistan with her family. “Bring your daughter to sleepover in my home. Make sure she takes a shower before she comes,” she remembered her daughter’s male “relatives” asking every weekend. “I found excuses to delay the time and left the country with my daughter, but the rest of the Uyghur mothers have no chance to escape like me.”⁵¹

⁴⁹Dawut, interview, March 24, 2021.

⁵⁰Sidik, interview, September 3, 2020.

⁵¹Dawut, interview, March 24, 2021.

The colonial ideology behind the Pair Up and Become Family policy created an opportunity for Han Chinese settlers to dominate Uyghur women as colonial property. There are many cases of Han Chinese men raping and assaulting Uyghur women, which the first author learned about from unofficial Uyghur sources about Han Chinese men. However, we could not include these cases here since it is very difficult to verify each one, and many of the victims are still in East Turkistan.