Photo/Illutration Chinese national flags fly at many of the shops in Urumchi in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in June 2019. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Numbers sometimes bring hidden facts to light. British writer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) referred to the weekly “Bills of Mortality” in his “A Journal of the Plague Year,” which depicts how London was ravaged by the Great Plague in the 17th century.

The weekly Bills of Mortality showed the number of burials in London for each week. The usual number of burials for a week was 300 at most, but the number successively increased--349, 394, 415. ... It was before there were daily newspapers to report on such things and the simple statistics attracted anxious attention from Londoners.

Recent Chinese statistics included some extraordinary data. The number of sterilization procedures performed on women in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region soared from slightly more than 3,000 in 2014 to around 60,000 in 2018, a 19-fold jump.

Beijing has been internationally criticized for its brutal repression of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority group in China that makes up half of the population of the region.

Last year, a German researcher published a report accusing China of forced sterilizations and abortions targeting Uighur women. The data on sterilization procedures seem to support the researcher’s claim that Beijing has been engaged in an inhumane campaign to curb Uighur birthrates in Xinjiang.

Earlier this year, the BBC reported a Uighur woman's firsthand accounts of how women in China's “political re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically tortured and sexually abused.

The Chinese government has denied the allegations, but Beijing needs to open these facilities to outside scrutiny if it wants to give credibility to its claims.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed human rights abuses against Uighurs in their first face-to-face meeting in Washington on April 16.

Human rights issues must never be used merely as a tool to obtain political advantage over China. But Japan should not overlook Beijing’s suppression of the Uighurs out of consideration to its economic ties with China.

Japan, as well as any other country, has a duty to pursue a narrow path of working for the human rights of minorities while avoiding raising military tensions.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 18

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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