The Uyghur Tribunal concluded its first set of hearings on 7 June; the tribunal will reconvene in September to hear more evidence. The evidence of the fourth day corroborated and expanded on the evidence given over the previous day. Of note was the evidence of Wang Leizhan (not his real name), a Han Chinese policeman who served in Xinjiang’s camps. He testified to mass arrests (up to 300,000 in 2018) of Uyghurs for being “politically incorrect”. He says Uyghur inmates were beaten and he believes others were raped or murdered. Expert evidence was also heard arguing that China is killing between 60,000 to 100,000 Uyghurs each year for their organs.
FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING
On the tribunal’s third day, Gulbahar Jelilova said that women were medically examined before being put into groups. She testified that the younger women usually disappeared shortly afterwards. On the tribunal’s fourth day, expert evidence has shed light on the possible reason for these disappearances—forced organ harvesting.
Ethan Gutmann of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation interviewed 20 Uyghur and Kazakh refugees from Xinjiang. The refugees were each from different camps, but all reported disappearances of the kind described by Jelilova. Men and women, usually aged 25-31, were taken in the middle of the night, following a medical examination.
Gutmann believes these men and women were selected for their organs. In 2016, the Chinese state claimed to perform 10,000 transplant surgeries. However, using statistics published by major Chinese hospitals, Gutmann calculated that the real figure was between 60,000 to 100,000. Gutmann has located nine industrial-scale crematoria in Xinjiang, too large to be dealing only with the local population. One such crematorium was found to be within minutes of two camps, a large prison hospital, and an airport.
Chinese surgeons are able to perform transplant surgeries within one-to-two weeks (in some cases within hours) after identifying a need for surgery. In contrast, average transplant waiting times are around 3 years in the United Kingdom. Previously, Chinese surgeons were using organs harvested from murdered practitioners of Falun Gong—a banned religious sect in China. However, the numbers of young, healthy, Falun Gong practitioners may be declining. Uyghurs are a readily available alternative.
From the witness testimony he gathered, Gutmann estimates between 25,000 and 50,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are being killed for their organs each year. He describes Chinese policy towards the Uyghurs as “we will assimilate them if we must, but we will kill them if we can”.
COERCIVE BIRTH CONTROL
Dr. Adrian Zenz, also of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, testified about declining Uyghur birth rates. Analysing four Uyghur majority counties in southern Xinjiang, Dr. Zenz found that birth rates had fallen 50% between 2018-2019, while birth rates only fell 4% nationally over the same period.
Dr. Zenz says Chinese discourse and state documents point clearly to an intention to change Xinjiang’s demographics. Lu Yilei is the Deputy Secretary General of Party Committee to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corporation. During a symposium in July 2020, he said:
[T]he problem in southern Xinjiang is an unbalanced population structure. Population and population security are important foundations for long-term peace and stability. The proportion of the Han population in Xinjiang is too low, less than 15%. The problem of demographic imbalance is southern Xinjiang’s core issue.
Another Chinese academic, Liao Zhaoyu of Tarim University, has called for China to “[c]hange the population structure and layout [of Xinjiang], [and] end the dominance of the Uyghur ethnic group”. The shift in family planning policy in Xinjiang, of which testimony was heard on the tribunal’s first and second days, means there will be 4.1 million fewer Uyghurs by 2040 in southern Xinjiang, according to Dr. Zenz, than would otherwise be expected.
Samuel is a trainee solicitor and postgraduate at Cardiff University. He is active in several U.K.-based organisations campaigning on behalf of Hong Kong and BNOs. His research interests include transitional justice and the rule of law.