June 17, 2021

Uyghur Refugees Describe Forced Abortion by Chinese Government

The Associated Press recently spoke with survivors of the Uyghur genocide in China who fled to Turkey. They told disturbing stories of the horrible experience Uyghur Muslims face at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, including forced abortions and torture.

Bumeryem Rozi is one of these survivors. The mother of four told the AP that authorities took her and other pregnant women to get forced abortions in 2007. She was pregnant with her fifth child at the time, but she said she complied because she feared how the government might retaliate against her family.

“I was 6 1/2 months pregnant,” Rozi, 55, told the AP. “The police came, one Uyghur and two Chinese. They put me and eight other pregnant women in cars and took us to the hospital. They first gave me a pill and said to take it. So I did. I didn’t know what it was. Half an hour later, they put a needle in my belly. And sometime after that I lost my child.”

The AP also spoke with Semsinur Gafur, a former obstetrician-gynecologist who worked at a village hospital in Xinjiang during the 1990s. She said that she and several other female clinicians would travel from house to house with a mobile ultrasound machine to check if any women were pregnant.

“If a household had more births than allowed, they would raze the home,” Gafur said. “They would flatten the house, destroy it. This was my life there. It was very distressing. And because I worked in a state hospital, people didn’t trust me. The Uyghur people saw me as a Chinese traitor.”

China continues to deny that it is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. Through its one-child policy, which has since increased to a three-child policy, the Chinese Communist Party additionally requires the deaths of unborn children of all races.

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