The Chinese Communist Party's Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiang

“We call on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end these horrific practices and ask all nations to join the United States in demanding an end to these dehumanizing abuses.”
Michael R. Pompeo
Secretary of State

What’s Happening in Xinjiang?

The Chinese Communist Party is waging a targeted campaign against Uyghur women, men, and children, and members of other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang, China. Documented human rights abuses include coercive population control methods, forced labor, arbitrary detention in internment camps, torture, physical and sexual abuse, mass surveillance, family separation, and repression of cultural and religious expression.

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In recent years, these egregious abuses have increased through government policies under the pretext and justification of fighting the “three evils” of “ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorism.”

The U.S. Department of State, scholars, human rights organizations, journalists, think tanks, and survivors of the Xinjiang camps themselves have provided ample information substantiating these abuses including:

Coercive population control through forced abortion, forced sterilization, and involuntary implantation of birth control;
The detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in internment camps;
Forced labor in facilities nearby or affiliated with the internment camps;
The destruction and closure of mosques and other religious sites, prevention of youths from participating in religious activities, forced political indoctrination or “re-education”.

Forced Population Control

The CCP is perpetrating a sustained campaign of forced sterilization, forced abortion, and involuntary implantation of birth control. Recent, documented evidence of these practices in Xinjiang is consistent with decades of CCP practices that demonstrate an utter disregard for the sanctity of human life and basic human dignity. We call on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end these horrific practices and ask all nations to join the United States in demanding an end to these dehumanizing abuses.

Forced Labor

Since 2017, the CCP has ramped up its campaign of brutal repression of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups through far-reaching and arbitrary detention and forced labor. In some cases, authorities have detained members of these groups based on spurious “birth policy violations.” The CCP’s use of forced labor to target members of ethnic and religious minority communities is not confined to the Xinjiang region, and is increasingly taking place throughout China through the CCP government-facilitated arrangements with private sector manufacturers. The government expanded this campaign through the transfer of more than 80,000 detainees into forced labor in as many as 19 other provinces during the 2019 reporting period, according to NGO estimates and media reports. The U.S. Department of State, along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a business advisory to caution businesses about the risks of supply chain links to entities that engage in human rights abuses, including forced labor, in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China.

Violations of Religious Freedom

The CCP is among the worst violators of religious freedom in the world and it continues to show blatant disregard for religious freedom and exercises extreme hostility to members of all religious faiths, including Protestants, Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong. The CCP’s campaign of repression against Uyghur Muslims and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang continues to escalate. More than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other minority Muslim groups have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps since April 2017. In practice, the CCP targets everyday expression of Islamic belief such as owning a Quran, praying, avoiding alcohol or tobacco, fasting during Ramadan, as well as secular aspects of non-Chinese culture such as Uyghur language and Uyghur music.