Trump Administration Condemns Chinese Claims about Forced Sterilization and Abortion

by Lisa Correnti: The Chinese government released a study claiming that “in the process of eradicating extremism” that Uyghur women had been “emancipated” from being “baby making machines.” The report also claimed that “gender equality and reproductive health” were promoted.

The Uyghurs live predominantly in the northwest region of China and are largely Muslim. The Chinese government has been charged with human rights abuses against the Uyghurs including placing them in concentration camps and forcing Uyghur women into sterilizations and abortions. The Chinese government says Uyghur women are now “more confident and independent.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately responded to these new claims, “Uyghur women are not emancipated by forced abortions and sterilizations.”

U.S. Ambassador on International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback said he was “Appalled and disgusted” at the Chinese lies. “Coercive population control is not reproductive health care. [Uyghur] women deserve to enjoy their religious freedom and unalienable rights with dignity to make their own choices,” he said.

The Chinese government-issued report said “extremism had incited people to resist family planning and its eradication had given Uyghur women more autonomy when deciding whether to have children.”

China has been under international scrutiny for the gross human rights abuses of religious minorities following a report by German researcher Dr. Adrian Zenz. Released last June in collaboration with the Associated Press, it documents widespread violations by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “to forcibly suppress birthrates among ethnic Uyghur communities.” Uyghur women failing to comply with fertility restrictions were sent to “re-education” centers, had pregnancies terminated through forced abortion, or were forcibly sterilized.

Reports issued by the U.S. Department of Labor and the United Nations found that over one million Muslim and other minorities have been forcibly detained. Zenz concluded in his findings that the CCP human rights violations in Xinjiang “meet the criteria for genocide as defined by the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

These revelations “show the Chinese Communist Party’s disparaging view of religious faith, its patronizing view of women, and its complete disrespect for the value of human life,” said China human rights expert Reggie Littlejohn.

Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers told the Friday Fax that what’s missing from the China Daily article is that “CCP-backed scholars have identified ‘as a key obstacle [to the CCP’s goals in Xinjiang] the religious belief that ‘the fetus is a gift from God.’’ By that definition, believers in virtually all the major world religions, including Christianity, would be identified as “religious extremists.”

Littlejohn praised the Trump administration for taking a leading role worldwide in forcefully condemning the CCP’s atrocities against the Uyghurs. “We call upon the Biden administration to strongly condemn human rights atrocities perpetrated by the CCP in Xinjiang, and to issue a genocide determination. We further call upon them not to renew funding for the UNFPA [United Nations Population Fund], absent complete transparency and proof that the UNFPA is not collaborating with the CCP’s egregious population control program.”

President Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act which had bipartisan Congressional support in June. The Act mandates reports to Congress on “Chinese government policies in Xinjiang that constitute gross violations of human rights, and the scope and scale of the detention and forced labor of Muslim minority groups in China.”
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Lisa Correnti is Executive Vice President of Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam)

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