Where did the deficit in AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases come from?

Since 2017, when the Chinese government officially started a policy of genocide in the Uyghur region, it has completely stopped publishing annual data on the AIDS epidemic in the region. Until now, the Chinese authorities are continuing their propaganda that "AIDS prevention and control work in the Uyghur region has achieved significant results, and the epidemic continues to be controlled at a low epidemic level." However, the graph of the epidemic situation of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in all provinces and cities of China reveals a potential threat in the Uyghur region.

China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new statistics on HIV and sexually transmitted infections in 2024 last week. It graphs the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, gonorrhea (super gonorrhea) and syphilis in a total of 32 provinces and metropolitan cities in China between 2021 and 2023. Its data shows that the number and extent of the disease has doubled in the past two years, and the number and extent of the outbreak are at an all-time high.

However, in this graph, the Uyghur region is full of deficits. The number of HIV infections in the Uyghur region is 5.43 per 10,000, ranking 7th in China; The number of syphilis patients is 73.04 per 10,000, ranking second in China; The incidence of infectious diseases such as gonorrhea is 4.20 per 10,000, ranking 22nd in China.

It is estimated that there is not a single village or village in the Uyghur region that has not been diagnosed with HIV. By the end of 2022, the number of people infected with HIV will exceed 60,000.

According to Chinese sources, the Uyghur region is one of the five provinces with the highest number of syphilis and gonorrhea cases, as well as one of the five provinces with the highest HIV prevalence.

According to the AIDS situation data released by China on December 1, 2023, every 260 people in the Uyghur region will be infected with HIV. It means that the number of AIDS in the Uyghur region with a population of about 20 million has exceeded that of Jiangsu, Shaanxi, and even Hubei with a population of more than 50-60 million in the last 5-6 years.

In 2017, Uyghur County was included in the list of the 10 regions with the most severe AIDS epidemic in China. According to the Uygur Autonomous Region Health and Family Planning Committee network, by the end of September 2017, there were 43,844 HIV-infected patients in the Uyghur region.

In order to find answers to the sources and reasons for the rising number of these data, we called the Department of Health Supervision and Epidemic Disease Prevention of the Uygur Autonomous Region, but our calls went unanswered.

In the process, our call to the Center for the Prevention of Infectious Diseases in Yining City, where the spread of AIDS is the worst in the Uyghur region, was connected. A Chinese official asked us, "Why has information about the AIDS situation in the Uyghur region been withheld or not released since 2017?" In response to our question, he said:

"As a result of our country's treatment and prevention of AIDS, the number of complications and deaths of AIDS patients in Xinjiang has significantly decreased, but because our region is lower than other developed cities in terms of economic development, the number of infected people is still increasing. . We have started to stop taking and reporting the number of people infected with HIV in Yining. We will continue to check the data of AIDS patients and send it to the central database of AIDS patients.

We also asked him about the statistics of infected people according to ethnicity. He said that he had no authority to disclose the data, and said that he could only give examples from the cases he knows in Yining.

"In Gulja, especially in recent years, the genotyping method of people's blood samples has been implemented using Shiminzi technology, which has made it easier to know and monitor HIV infection. According to the survey results of the most recent 600 HIV infected patients in Yining, 54.7 percent are men, and 85 percent are Uyghurs. 60.5 percent of infected people are married or have a partner, and the main ways of transmission are sexual contact and using the same syringe. In the national statistics index, our number in Xinjiang is really low. We must not strengthen our work in this regard.

Ever since the graphic and information released by China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has gone viral, it has been known to raise speculations and suspicions among Uyghurs and even among Chinese who use Chinese social media.

Uighur responses abroad suggest that the possibility of exposure to, transmission of, and transmission of such diseases is much lower in Uyghur lands where millions of Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples are confined in camps, and where most people are restricted from leaving the region and are strictly controlled. They also say that because Uyghurs live by Muslim moral standards, Uyghurs who live a clean lifestyle are less likely to be infected. Many have also suggested that the decline in infections found in the Uyghur region may have been caused by a surge in Chinese immigration.

Ethan Gutman, a researcher at the Memorial Fund for Victims of Communism, who has investigated and published reports on the camps in Uyghur and the Uyghur population being used as a source of forced organ transfers by China, said:

"I personally don't trust any data released by the Chinese government. Why are they releasing this number now? Usually, the Chinese government publishes such figures before issuing a new policy. Do you want to make excuses such as if we let the Uyghurs free, this is what will happen, they will be chaotic in life and spread infectious diseases easily? Because the Chinese, who saw their deficits in the epidemic situation in Xinjiang, think they are Uyghurs. I suspect China has a political motive behind releasing this data. That is, China may have released this figure to show the self-accusing West that its treatment of Uyghurs is correct. Because at that time, during the genocide against the Jews, Hitler also promoted the Jews as people who would spread all kinds of epidemics and bring disaster to the world.

Mr. Ethan emphasized: "As we know, in the 1990s in Ili and other places, it was spread by sharing needles because of drugs, but now it is not possible to spread through drugs. It is common practice in the camps to draw blood from captives for organs, so could they focus on disinfecting syringes for routine blood draws or injections for so many people? This means that by using the same syringe over and over again on different prisoners, the epidemic in the camp could have been serious. If the epidemic among Uyghurs is said to be spread through sexual contact, we have to consider the seriousness of the conditions in which Uyghur women and men were raped by Chinese police and gangs. In such a situation, it is quite possible that there will be serious consequences of the spread of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in the camps.

Ms. Sairagul, a witness of the camp, said that the increase in the number is the result of the Chinese government's genocidal policy in the Uyghur region. said

Ms. Orinur Siddiq, a camp witness, also accepted our interview and said that the poor sanitary conditions in the men's and women's camps in Urumqi, where she taught, made it possible for such acute infectious diseases to spread to the Uyghurs; He emphasized that the policies implemented by China in the region, such as "cross-breeding" and the transfer of Chinese immigrants, have disrupted the Uighurs' normal way of life and increased the risk of various infectious diseases among them.