Xinjiang: A teacher compelled into giving classes in Xinjiang internment camps has described her forced sterilisation at the age of 50, under a government campaign to suppress birth rates of women from Muslim minorities.Qelbinur Sidik said the repression swept up not just women likely to fall pregnant, but those well beyond normal childbearing ages. She got messages from local authorities said women aged 19 to 59 were expected to have intrauterine devices (IUDs) fitted or undergo sterilisation.
China describes the camps as ‘training centres’ to help deter extremists, but former prisoners say they are being used to curb the country’s Muslim population.
China is also accused of keeping thousands of Uighur children away from their Muslim parents and attempting to ‘indoctrinate’ them in camps posing as schools or orphanages. Earlier this month shocking drone footage showed large groups of detainees being led into Chinese prison camps wearing blindfolds, with their hands bound and their heads shaven.
In 2017, Sidik was 47 and her only daughter was at university when officials insisted she must have an IUD inserted to prevent the unlikely chance of another pregnancy. Just over two years later, at 50, she was forced to undergo sterilisation. When the first order came, the Chinese language teacher was already giving classes at one of the now notorious internment camps appearing across China’s western Xinjiang region. Details of China’s sweeping campaign of repression against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been exposed slowly from the tightly controlled region, but there is increasing evidence of efforts to slash birth rates, which some experts have called “demographic genocide”.This has included forced birth control and sterilisation, fines and even prison sentences for those considered to have too many children, a recent report said.
She worked as a teacher in two camps, where she claims she saw starvation, unsanitary and humiliating conditions, including limited access to bathrooms and water. She also heard the screams of tortured prisoners and witnessed at least one inmate being carried out dead.Permission to leave China is given only rarely to Muslim minorities from Xinjiang these days, and almost never to Uighurs. She left China in late 2019 and expects to never return. Her husband, a Uighur, applied for a permit to travel with her. Authorities told him: “Don’t even dream about it.”
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