China’s attacks on Uyghur women are crimes against humanity

October 21, 2019 | The Washington Post | By Elizabeth M. Lynch

As Tursun’s translator, Zubayra Shamseden, who is also the outreach coordinator for the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, wrote in an essay back in April, the Chinese government “wants to erase Uyghur culture and identity by remaking its women.” Shamseden’s take — that if you want to eradicate a people, you must destroy its women — was not lost on the drafters of the Genocide Convention or the lawyers who shaped the doctrine of crimes against humanity. Both include nonlethal atrocities that are disproportionately perpetrated against women. Acts designed to prevent births and forcibly transfer children from their families could constitute genocide. Similarly, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and sexual violence each constitute a crime against humanity.

Allegations of rape in the camps have surfaced, too. Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh who was forced to work in one of the women’s camps in Xinjiang, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that every evening, the guards would take the pretty inmates with them, returning them in the morning. She also saw incidents of gang rape, including of one female inmate while other inmates were forced to watch. Shamseden told me that she too has heard that rape is common in the camps — as well as outside of the camps, where Uyghur women are forced into situations where sexual harassment and sexual assault by their Han Chinese male bosses are prevalent.

Read the full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/21/chinas-attacks-uighur-women-are-crimes-against-humanity/