On the occation of International Women's Day, the Rafto Foundation, together with Norwegian Uighur Commitee, arranged a webinar to shed light on how China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs affect women, especially through forced sterilization and systematic abuse.

In East Turkestan, an autonomous republic North West in China, more than 1 million Uyghurs are detained in concentration camps, as part of China’s heavy crackdown on minorities. The severe human rights abuses carried out by China amounts to fall into the definition of cultural genocide, according to human rights experts.

The US has denounced China’s atrocities against the Uyghur population as a genocide, and in the UK, a newly published formal legal opinion concludes that there is evidence of state-mandated behaviour showing an intent to destroy the largely Muslim minority in north-western China. (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55973215).

Some of the latest reports to showcase these atrocities, document how China is carrying out forced sterilization of women and other measures to prevent women giving birth, resulting in a terrifying drop in the Uyghur population rates. There are also recent reports documenting how women and girls are subjected to systematic abuse in China's "re-education" camps for Uyghurs, where they have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-c...

Panelists:

Shayida Ali and Rushan Abbas.
The discussion will be moderated by Megha Rajagopalan from Buzzfeed.