One of my sons keeps telling me I need to write a novel about the horrors going on inside China. He’s right, and over the past year or so I’ve been watching the Communist leadership there more closely. What I have seen is chilling.

Let me give you an example.

“Vocational training centers” and voluntary “boarding schools” for “trainees”[1]—that is how some Chinese government officials have characterized the detention camps that have forcibly held between one and two million members of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China. The camps are necessary, they say, in order to combat the extremism and terrorism that are characteristic of this region. And the camps are working, so says news anchor Liu Xin of CGTN (a state-controlled international English-language news channel based in Beijing).

“Thanks to China’s de-radicalization courses in Xinjiang, not a single terror case has occurred in the past three years, and tourism is booming once again. What’s wrong with rehabilitation? Maybe it is condemned by the U.S. simply because it’s done by China.”[2]

“The ends justify the means” has been a hallmark philosophy of the Communist Chinese government since the time of Mao. Apart from the 35 to 40 million people who horrifically died of starvation in the name of the chairman’s Great Leap Forward, another 1.5 to 2 million Chinese perished during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution as they were “reeducated,” or “rehabilitated” as Liu Xin would put it. An obedient and subservient populace, so the theory goes, is a peaceful populace. Therefore, any measures that are needed to bring about this obedience and subservience are both necessary and right. This is the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) ruling ideology as they deal with their Muslim minorities.

What this means for the Uighur people is mass detention in reeducation camps. Although information is hard to come by regarding living conditions and what exactly takes place in these camps, reports have filtered out to the West from some who have been released from the camps or who managed to escape. These survivors describe men and women being forced to renounce their faith and instead pledge their loyalty to the CCP. Some were tortured, and many women have been sexually abused and forced into having abortions.[3]

Last month, Adrian Zenz, a German anthropologist who specializes in China studies, published a report through The Jamestown Foundation titled “Sterilizations, Forced Abortions, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.” In his introduction, he wrote, “Intrauterine contraceptive devices, sterilizations, and forced family separations: since a sweeping crackdown starting in late 2016 transformed Xinjiang into a draconian police state, witness accounts of intrusive state interference into reproductive autonomy have become ubiquitous. While state control over reproduction has long been a common part of the birth control regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the situation in Xinjiang has become especially severe following a policy of mass internment initiated in early 2017 (China Brief, September 21, 2017) by officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”[4]

This is genocide on the installment plan—a long-term strategy to vastly diminish or completely wipe out a whole population of people based on their ethnic heritage and religious beliefs.

The report by Dr. Zenz has created quite a stir in the international community. Recently President Donald Trump’s administration sanctioned three senior officials in Xinjiang, placing travel restrictions against them and their families. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany explained the actions, saying, “We’ve taken a very strong stance on the side of human rights and against the atrocities we’ve seen.”[5]

I applaud what the administration has done so far. It’s a beginning, but much more must be done. The European Union seems to be coming closer to a response against China. German European Parliament member Reinhard Bütikofer affirmed this movement toward sanctions, saying, “Even with the zigzagging you always have with European policy, the direction is very clear.”[6]

We must pray that the stir among the world governments quickly turns into action. Any person being persecuted because of their religious beliefs is an egregious violation of their human rights—be they Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other religion. The church has a responsibility to lift up these suffering people in prayer, asking God to free them from their oppressors and to protect their lives. This includes the lives of the Uighurs and others who are forced into these camps, as well as the lives of so many unborn children who are being murdered in the womb through the CCP’s continuing heinous policy of forced abortion.

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[1] Lindsay Maizland, “China’s Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 30, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang

[2] T-House (@thouse_opinions), “Thanks to China’s de-radicalization courses in #Xinjiang . . . ,” Twitter, December 6, 2019, 1:01 a.m., https://twitter.com/thouse_opinions/status/1202845586086481920

[3] Lindsay Maizland, “China’s Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang”

[4] Adrian Zenz, Sterilizations, Forced Abortions, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang (Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, 2020), https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Zenz-Internment-Sterilizations-and-IUDs.pdf?x60014

[5] Adam Shaw, “Trump Administration Sanctions Chinese Officials over Human Rights Abuses against Uyghur Muslims,” Fox News, July 9, 2020, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-administration-sanctions-chinese-officials-human-rights-abuses

[6] Ishaan Tharoor, “China’s Campaign of ‘Genocide’ Could Bring the U.S. and E.U. Closer Together,” Washington Post, Jun 29, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/30/chinas-campaign-genocide-could-bring-us-eu-closer-together/