On the occasion of International Women's Day (March 8), the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) would like to draw attention to the terrible violence against Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz women in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang during the past years. "The inhumane camp system the Chinese government has installed there is only the tip of the iceberg," criticized Jasna Causevic, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. "Sexualized violence and other serious human rights violations against women are also commonplace outside the camps. Their households are monitored, and many are forced to live in Han households like slaves. Forced abortions, sterilizations, and forced marriages to Han Chinese are the especially barbaric excesses of this policy."

Yesterday, Kazakh witness and activist Sayragul Sauytbay – who was awarded the Nuremberg Human Rights Prize just a few days ago – described the situation as a nightmare. In the scope of the so-called "family" campaign, Muslim women and families are forced to live with a Chinese family for eight days a month. "Officially, the aim is to give them a better understanding of Chinese culture – but Muslim women and girls are often treated as slaves in the household, or have to join the Chinese man of the house in bed, like a wife," Sauytbay reported. "The Chinese Communist Party is using systematic rape as a weapon to destroy our society."

"The Chinese leadership is pursuing a strategy of destroying the independent identity, culture, and language of the minorities in Xinjiang," Causevic explained. "Due to forced sterilizations, the birth rate among Uyghur women has already dropped significantly. At the same time, masses of children are torn from their families in order to indoctrinate them in state institutions." The overall goal is to alienate them from the Uyghur culture and, in the long run, create a homogeneous Han-dominated society in Xinjiang – and it is especially the women who are suffering under the demographic and cultural genocide of Xinjiang's Muslim nationalities. 

"The reactions of the West, especially Europe, are completely inadequate considering the increasingly cruel policy," Causevic criticized. "It is high time for the European Union to impose sanctions on those who are responsible – and the Federal Republic of Germany must condemn the atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party." Further, Causevic emphasized that Germany should also advocate for the establishment of a permanent UN mandate through which human rights violations of the Chinese government inside and outside of China could be observed and documented.