How oppressive China is using technology for genocide of Uyghurs, mainly women

New Delhi: The oppressive Chinese regime has deployed new and worst form of racism in Xinxiang province to wipe out the Uyghur Muslims. Reports suggest that millions of Ughurs have been imprisoned in modern day concentration camps and are being subjected to barbaric treatment on daily basis, seen as nothing sort of state-sponsored genocide.

In recent years, China has remodelled its tactics to wipe out the Uyghur community. It has begun using technology to conduct its own kind of genocide.

No freedom for Uyghurs, lakhs packed in concentration camps

By putting Xinjiang under a grid management system, China is now able to control every aspect of Uyghur’s life — religious, familial, cultural and social, the Foreign Policy reported. Under the grid management system, the cities and villages are split into squares of about 500 people wherein each square has a police station that closely monitors residents by regularly scanning their identification cards, faces, DNA samples, fingerprints and cell phones.

“These methods are supplemented by a machine-operated system known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform. The system uses machine learning to collect personal data from video surveillance, smartphones and other private records to generate lists for detention. Over a million Han Chinese watchers have been installed in Uyghur households, rendering even intimate spaces subject to the government’s eye,” said Rayhan Asat and Yonah Diamond, the authors of the article in Foreign Policy.

According to the Genocide Convention, genocide can be defined as specific acts against members of a group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. These acts include (a) killing; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ironically, China is a member of the Convention and yet continues to conduct genocide against its own ethnic community.

Women, the worst sufferer; forced to undergo sterilisation

Among the Uyghur community, the worst suffers are women. In 2017, the Xinjiang government started “Special Campaign to Control Birth Control Violations,” along with specific local directives and by 2019, the government aimed to have over 80 per cent of women of childbearing age to undergo forced intrauterine devices (IUDs) and sterilisation. The goal was to achieve “zero birth control violation incidents.”

As part of the campaign, the government started hunting down the women of childbearing age and then forced them to undergo sterilisation to avoid being sent to an internment camp.

The authors said, “Between 2015 and 2018, population growth rates in the Uyghur heartland plummeted by 84 per cent. Conversely, official documents show that sterilization rates skyrocketed in Xinjiang while plunging throughout the rest of China, and the funding for these programs is only increasing. Between 2017 and 2018, in one district, the percentage of women who were infertile or widowed increased by 124 per cent and 117 per cent respectively.”

“In 2018, 80 per cent of all IUD placements in China were performed in Xinjiang despite accounting for a mere 1.8 per cent of China’s population. These IUDs can be removed only by state-approved surgery — or else prison terms will follow. In Kashgar, only about 3 per cent of married women of childbearing age gave birth in 2019.”

“The latest annual reports from some of these regions have begun omitting birth rate information altogether to conceal the scale of destruction. The government has shut down its entire online platform after these revelations. The scale and scope of these measures are clearly designed to halt Uyghur births,” the authors added.

(with ANI inputs)