Experts have warned that China’s national health authority’s plans to open 6 new medical centers will triple the number of facilities forcibly harvesting organs from the detained Uyghur people, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.
China has repeatedly been accused of genocide for targeting the Uyghur people. It has also been claimed that Beijing has forcibly harvested the organs of other minority groups held prisoner, selling the stolen organs to the wealthy recipients.
In 3029, a tribunal held in the UK found that China conducted as many as 100,000 organ transplants annually - three times the number China reported to the international register.
Kazakh doctor and former prisoner in Xinjiang, Sayragul, has warned that China separates prisoners based on the results of blood tests, and those who receive a pink check mark next to their names would disappear. She believes they are victim of China’s forced organ harvesting industry.
Wendy Rogers, the chairman of ETAC’s advisory board, told the Telegraph that prisoners are slowly killed as their organs are removed against their will.
China's abuse of the Uyghur people
Earlier this month, the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) issued a new statement demanding that China provide information on the Uyghur people who went missing in 2009 after authorities violently cracked down on them in protests in Ürümchi.
The protest had initially been a response to the killing of Uyghur factory workers in Guangdong. Authorities opened fire on the demonstrators, and the number of casualties remains unknown.
“The killing and enforced disappearance of innocent Uyghur protesters sixteen years ago paved the way for the genocide in East Turkistan today,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “The international community has a responsibility to pressure the Chinese government to end the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of Uyghurs and to free all who are currently detained.”
In 2021, UHRP released the report ‘The Disappearance of Uyghur Intellectual and Cultural Elites,’ which allegedly recorded the disappearance of 312 Uyghur influential intellectual and cultural leaders.
Beyond forced organ harvesting and disappearances, the US Labour Department has accused authorities of detaining Uyghurs in work camps with oppressive conditions. In the camps, they receive little pay, are not allowed to leave, and have limited or no communication with family members, according to the department, and family visits that are allowed are heavily monitored.
The Uyghur workers are also forcibly taught Mandarin and made to undergo ideological indoctrination, according to the department.
In 2022, the United Nations reported finding "serious human rights violations" against mainly Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang under China's national security and counter-terrorism policies, as well as forced labor accusations.
China has repeatedly countered that the rights of all ethnic groups in the region were protected while denying forced labor. It has dismissed the report as "groundless" and a part of the West's attempts to contain China.
Reuters contributed to this report.