Chinese Embassy Tweet About Uighurs and Birth Rate Draws Instant Condemnation

In a new state media report, the Chinese government is defending its policies against Muslim women in the country’s westernmost province, where it’s been accused of forced mass sterilization — a horrific crime it strongly denies.

In a tweet Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. shared the report, saying that Muslim women in Xinjiang province are “no longer baby-making machines” and that the decrease in population growth throughout the province led to a drop in terrorism.

The tweet garnered instead blowback and calls for Twitter to remove it, given the Chinese government’s oppressive campaign against Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities.

“Decreases in the birthrate and natural population growth rate in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in 2018 resulted from the eradication of religious extremism,” according to the article published by China Daily, the largest Chinese Communist Party-owned English language newspaper with circulation worldwide.

The study and press releases from the Chinese government attributed the decrease in population growth to family planning programs and increased education, which religious extremism “incited people to resist,” according to another press release from the embassy.

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“They keep trying to get out of the accusations of genocide,” said Adrian Zenz, senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Zenz’s research back in June provided substantial evidence for a “forced mass sterilization” campaign taking place in Xinjiang.

China’s treatment of Uighurs has come under increased scrutiny in the last couple years, as the Chinese government ramped up its so-called “re-education” campaign that uses mass detention camps.

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“The birthrate in Xinjiang decreased from 1.6 percent in 2017 to 1 percent in 2018 and the natural population growth rate fell from 1.1 percent to 0.6 percent,” according to the study.

As China’s Muslim population in Xinjiang plummets, the government continues to relocate its Han Chinese, the country’s main ethnic group, into the mineral-rich region. {snip}

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