The Associated Press reported (June 30) that population control measures backed by mass detention, both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply, are being imposed across the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region. It said birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60 per cent from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. The AP report said Chinese health statistics show that in 2014, just over 200,000 IUDs were inserted in Xinjiang. By 2018, that jumped more than 60 per cent to nearly 330,000 IUDs. At the same time, IUD use fell sharply elsewhere in China, as many women began getting the devices removed. It added that budget documents obtained by Adrian Zenz, an independent contractor with the nonprofit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C., show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program. Even while sterilization rates plummeted in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures.
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