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Lemkin Institute

The Urgent Need To Defend Uyghur Children And Their Families


KASHGAR, XINJIANG, CHINA - 2017/07/08: A Uyghur boy is pictured on the street of the Kashgar old town in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. [Source Credit: Guillaume Payen/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]



At the time of this writing, I am ten weeks into maternity leave for my firstborn son. This little boy has quickly become one of the most important people to me. I bear personal responsibility for shepherding his precious life and ensuring his safety.


Though I always understood the gravity and brutality of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) genocide and crimes against humanity ongoing against Uyghur Muslims, the birth of my son has given me a newfound appreciation for the depravity of the CCP’s strategy of separating child from parent.


This week, a new report from Bitter Winter revealed three videos of Uyghur boys, ages 5 to 11, coerced into saying that they loved or wanted to join the People’s Liberation Army. They said it in Chinese, not Uyghur. They were goaded by CCP officials to say what they said.

These boys are but a few of the estimated 900,000 Uyghur children separated from their parents in so-called boarding schools or live-in kindergartens. While we have long known about these programs thanks to the meticulous work of China scholar Adrian Zenz, these videos provide evidence of the nature of the CCP’s indoctrination.


It is no secret that the CCP seeks to tear apart Uyghur families; the ultimate aim is replacing the family unit with the Party. Some Uyghur children are effectively orphaned because both of their parents are extrajudicially imprisoned in the CCP’s political prison camps which are estimated to hold between 1.8 million to 3 million individuals. Others have parents sent to various parts of China as part of mass forced