The Story Of Xinjiang Chinese Uighur Muslim Women Who Feel Living In "Hell"

One of the Uighur women in Xinjiang (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - Zumrat Dawut, a Uighur woman told her story of how she was convicted of having three children. Ironically, apart from being required to pay a fine, he was also forced to sterilize her womb. The project director of the World Uyghur Congress calls this common case of Uyghur women making them live in "hell."

Dawut told CNN her story about how she was forced to sterilize her womb by the Chinese government, because she had three children, more than the number the local government had set for two. In addition, the 38-year-old Uighur woman said she was fined 18,400 yuan or around 38 million rupiah in 2018.

When Dawut went to pay the fine, he was not only ordered to pay off the sentence, he was also required to carry out birth control procedures. Right then he was brought to the clinic. There he was put on an IV and given anesthetic drugs.

Then a doctor who treated Dawut told him that he had just finished doing tubal ligation, a small hole surgery to cut the woman's fallopian tube. The point is that at the clinic he is permanently sterilized.

Dawut's story is not unique. Over the years, Uighur women both in Xinjiang and around the world have accused the Chinese government of carrying out a campaign of abuse including forced sterilization, cultural indoctrination and incidents of sexual violence.

CNN said this was part of a broad pattern of human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Xinjiang, for which authorities are accused of detaining up to two million Uighurs. This is considered as an effort to enforce control over the territory, which is inhabited by the Chinese minority.

The project director of the World Uyghur Congress in London from Xinjiang, Rhima Mahmut, said the women living there were in "hell." "Just like any genocide and anywhere else, women are always the number one target. There is a very serious crime happening on a large scale," Mahmut said.

The Chinese government has consistently denied all of these allegations. They say his efforts in Xinjiang are legitimate and necessary to prevent extremism. And do not forget also the propaganda of the threat of terrorism against the state.