China expert Adrian Zenz reported Monday that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities’ forced birth control policies targeting Uighur indigenous Muslim minority women may constitute genocide under Article II, Section D of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Article II of the Convention defines “genocide” as any act intended to “destroy … a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

Zenz’s findings show that the Uighur population growth in Xinjiang has plummeted in recent years—growth rates declined by 84 percent between 2015 and 2018, continuing to fall in 2019—due to CCP’s internment camps and forced birth control policies. According to the report, one Uighur region aimed to reduce population growth by 1.05 per mile compared to the “already low” 11.45 per mile in 2018, meaning that the region set an “unprecedented near–zero” population growth target for 2020.

CCP’s 2019 campaign documents reveal past and future plans to mass sterilize or forcibly implement intrusive birth control procedures—including IUDs and forced abortions—on at least 80 percent of rural Uighur women in southern Xinjiang. Last year, authorities reportedly subjected 14 and 34 percent of all married Uighur women of childbearing age to these procedures.

The campaign continues into 2020 with increased funding, setting goals to sterilize women with three or more children, which accounts for 20 percent of all childbearing–age women in southern Xinjiang.

Zenz notes in the report that CCP’s campaign documents offer compelling evidence of China’s plans to subject Uyghur populations to genocide.

“The population control regime instituted by CCP authorities in Xinjiang aims to suppress minority population growth,” Zenz noted. “These findings raise serious concerns as to whether Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang represent … a demographic campaign of genocide per the text of Section D, Article II of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”