On 29 June it was reported that the People’s Republic of China were forcibly sterilising Uyghur Muslim women as part of the state’s relentless campaign of persecution against the minority ethnic group. Forced sterilisation occurs when an individual is rendered incapable of sexual reproduction despite either explicit refusal or a lack of consent, a procedure which often leads to social isolation and lifelong grief. Forced sterilisation can also encompass situations where misinformation, intimidation, and violence are used to obtain consent.
FORCED STERILISATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Forced sterilisation is an egregious human rights violation. Article 7 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights not only states that nobody should ‘be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’, but further details that no individual should be subject ‘without his free consent to medical… experimentation’. To that end, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed in V.C. v Slovakia[1] that forced sterilisation violated an individual’s right to be free from inhumane or degrading treatment, as well as their right to privacy. Specifically regarding informed consent, Article 6 of The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights affirms that any medical intervention should only be performed if the individual concerned has given their ‘prior, free and informed consent… based on adequate information’.
FORCED STERILISATION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF VIOLENCE
The forced sterilisation of Uyghur Muslim women is an abhorrent act of violence unto itself. It is an act of violence that acts as a stark reminder of how the intersection between race and gender often makes results in women being particularly vulnerable to harm. Yet distressingly, this violence must be placed in the wider context of the aims of the Chinese government.
In November 2019, The New York Times received hundreds of leaked documents from inside the Chinese Government, which disclosed many directives and reports concerning the control and suppression of the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Appetite for this clampdown originated in a series of speeches delivered by members of the Communist Party, following an attack by Uyghur militants that left 31 people dead. Rather than condemning the attack for what it was - an isolated act of extremist violence - the Chinese Government used the attack to denounce an entire ethnic group. A phrase attributed to Chen Quanguo - the Communist Party Secretary of the XUAR - is arguably most telling in relation to the extent of the attack against the Uyghur Muslim population: “Round up everyone who should be rounded up”.
A PRECURSOR TO GENOCIDE
It is evident that forced sterilisation is working as the Chinese Government intended it to; the birth rate in the XUAR fell by almost 24% last year. This is particularly alarming when one considers that the average decline in birth rate nationwide is approximately 4%. However, beyond an attempt to curb the population, there is the concern that forced sterilisation is just one small part of a large scale, systematic attempt to destroy the identity and culture of an entire people.
Millions of Uyghur Muslims have been sent to Chinese ‘re-education camps’, which are essentially no more than internment camps plagued by accusations of ideological indoctrination, rape, and torture. More recently, allegations of forced organ harvesting have been reported. Recently, the China Tribunal was tasked with addressing claims that the People’s Republic of China has been killing individuals so that their organs may be removed and used as transplants. The Tribunal stated that their judgement was not influenced by China’s reputation as a grave human rights offender. They declared that whilst insufficient evidence existed to definitively say whether the Uyghur population has been subject to forced organ harvesting, there was no denying that the group was uniquely vulnerable to that risk.
What was most damning about the China Tribunal’s judgement, however, was the assertion that if further evidence is brought to light regarding these accusations, China could find itself labelled as a perpetrator of genocide; the gravest crime against humanity to exist. The definition of genocide given in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court details how genocide involves members of a group being killed or seriously harmed - both mentally and physically - with the deliberate aim of eradicating that group. Given this definition, the reports of forced sterilisation, torture, indoctrination, and potential forced organ harvesting of the Uyghur Muslim population leaves little room to describe China’s behaviour as anything other than an intention to commit genocide.
[1] Application 18968/07, 2011
Bethany is a law student with a keen interest in human rights, especially as relating to women and intersectionality. Having just completed her law degree at the University of Bristol, she will begin the LPC in September before embarking on a training contract in late 2021.