By N. C. Bipindra
Mao once said, “Women hold up half the sky”. However, this stands in stark contrast to the lived reality of Uyghur women, whose sky is shrinking under the weight of systematic repression by Communist China.
The Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang (originally East Turkestan) constitutes one of the most systematic and alarming human rights violations of the 21st century.
Since 2014 — intensifying sharply in 2017 — Beijing has implemented a systematic campaign of repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities through mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, ideological indoctrination, forced labour, and the destruction of religious and cultural identity.
What do Human Rights Reports on Uyghurs’ Conditions in China-Occupied Xinjiang Say?
Reports by various human rights organisations estimate that over one million Uyghurs have been detained in so-called “re-education” camps.
Beijing justifies these measures by invoking the fight against what it terms the “three evils”: terrorism, separatism, and extremism. Communist China has framed them as threats to national security, an irony there.
This narrative has been strategically deployed to legitimise an extensive surveillance apparatus, mass detentions, and the systematic suppression of Uyghur identity and culture in Xinjiang (which literally means, New Frontier, clearly establishing it is an occupied territory).
Nevertheless, the extent, scope, and nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s actions point not to counterterrorism, but a deliberate policy of cultural erasure and authoritarian control.
While mounting evidence has exposed the scale of China’s human rights violations — from mass internment camps to pervasive digital surveillance — less often discussed is how deeply this repression is gendered.
How has Communist China’s Crackdown on East Turkestan Impacted the Uyghurs?
In the broader narrative of China’s crackdown in East Turkestan are the Uyghur women, who have become not only the primary victims but also the most silenced voices in this crisis.
In the machinery of state violence, their lives are ensnared in a complex web of control, trauma, and cultural erasure.
Uyghur women are forced to live under a state-imposed ideological order — one that regulates their bodies, erases their identity, and tears apart their families.
These women are subjected to an intricate system of state control. Uyghur women experience overlapping forms of political, cultural, and bodily subjugation.
The state-directed strategies, including coercive birth control, forced sterilisations, family separations, and ideological indoctrination, constitute a calculated effort to curtail Uyghur women’s reproductive autonomy and suppress their ethno-religious identity.
These policies are most visible within East Turkestan, but their impact reverberates beyond the region.
In exile, Uyghur women persist in facing the psychological and emotional repercussions of displacement, frequently bearing the burdens of surveillance, familial loss, and cultural dislocation.
What have Experts Found About Uyghurs’ Genocide by Communist China?
Adrian Zenz, a distinguished German academic and researcher on East Turkestan, has meticulously chronicled the Chinese Communist Party’s implementation of coercive reproductive policies aimed at diminishing Uyghur population growth.
His scholarly investigations elucidate that the state has resorted to invasive measures such as enforced IUD insertions and surgical sterilisations as components of a comprehensive strategy for demographic manipulation.
Uyghur women who do not conform to government-mandated birth quotas are subjected to severe repercussions, including substantial fines, imprisonment, or detention in so-called re-education facilities.
In one of his reports, Zenz revealed that within a single fiscal year, the East Turkestan region allocated an approximate sum of US$37 million to population control initiatives, which encompassed mass sterilisations and mandatory contraceptive implants.
How does Communist China Implements Its Genocide Policies on Uyghurs?
The ramifications have been pronounced: in 2019, birth rates in East Turkestan experienced a dramatic decline of 24 percent, contrasting sharply with a national decrease of merely 4.2 percent.
Another policy of Communist China, framed under the guise of promoting “ethnic unity,” encourages interracial marriages between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women. This policy operates as a strategic instrument of cultural assimilation and demographic manipulation.
Since 2017, the implementation of this policy has notably accelerated in tandem with the large-scale internment of Uyghur men, rendering Uyghur women increasingly susceptible to state-sanctioned coercion within a deeply gendered framework of control of women’s bodily autonomy and their reproductive rights.
Since antiquity, and well into the 21st century, sexual violence, including mass rape, has been systematically used as a tool of genocide.
Correspondingly, the Chinese Communist State’s treatment of Uyghur women in East Turkestan reflects this pattern, with reports indicating that women held in internment and forced labor camps are subjected not only to gender-based repression but also to mass rape and sexual torture.
What is the Legal Framework on Uyghur’s Human Rights under International Laws?
The relevance of this pattern is underscored by the legal framework established by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
ICTR clarified that genocide involves any act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including measures to prevent births, such as forced sterilisation or separating sexes.
In this context, Communist China’s state policies in East Turkestan of mass sterilisations, gender separation through internment of Uyghur men, and coerced marriages of Uyghur women to Han Chinese men, constitute clear violations of the UN Genocide Convention, specifically Articles 2(b), 2(c), and 2(d), and reflect the broader colonial agenda in East Turkestan.
What are the Final Thoughts on Uyghur Women and Their Human Rights
Thus, the policies enacted by the Chinese government in the East Turkestan region — ostensibly framed as measures against terrorism and for the purpose of ethnic integration — are unequivocally characterised along gendered lines, with Uyghur women disproportionately subjected to various forms of cultural, physical, and reproductive violence.
These acts are not merely incidental occurrences, but rather integral components of a systematic strategy aimed at the obliteration of an entire ethnic group through the exploitation of women’s bodies.
The confluence of racialised and gendered state repression positions Uyghur women as the primary, albeit frequently marginalised, victims of a contemporary genocidal endeavor.
As the global community persistently documents and addresses the heinous violations transpiring in East Turkestan, the experiences of Uyghur women must be foregrounded — whose enforced silence has persisted for far too long, and whose acts of resistance, resilience, and rights are fundamental to any comprehensive framework of justice and accountability.
Law and Society Alliance 