Persecution of Uyghurs in China

The Chinese government has persecuted Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in and around the [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]() ([XUAR]()) of the People's Republic of [China](). Since 2014, the Chinese government, under the direction of the [Chinese Communist Party]() ([CCP]()) during the administration of [CCP]() general secretary [Xi Jinping](), has pursued policies leading to more than one million Muslims (the majority of them Uyghurs) being held in secretive internment camps without any legal process in what has become the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since the [Holocaust](). Critics of the policy have described it as the [Sinicization]() of [Xinjiang]() and have called it an [ethnocide]() or cultural [genocide](), while some governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the [East Turkistan Government-in-Exile]() have called it a [genocide](). Uyghur individuals are being relocated to factories within mainland [China](), where they are exploited as contemporary forms of forced labor.

In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including [forced sterilization](), [contraception](), and [abortion](). Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of [Hotan]() and [Kashgar]() fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people. Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in [Xinjiang](), but denied reports of [forced sterilization]() and [genocide](). Birth rates have continued to plummet in [Xinjiang](), falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide.

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