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Since 2014, the Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights. In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo, the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as "vocational education and training centers", in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II. China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the penal system. In addition to mass detention, government policies have included forced labor and factory work, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortion. An estimated 16,000 mosques have been razed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools. Chinese government statistics reported that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%. Chinese authorities according to CNN acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization. Birth rates in Xinjiang fell a further 24% in 2019, compared to a nationwide decrease of 4.2%. The Chinese government denies having committed human rights abuses in Xinjiang. International reactions have varied, with its actions being described as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, as ethnocide or cultural genocide, or as genocide. Those accusing China of genocide point to intentional acts they say violate Article II of the Genocide Convention, which prohibits "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part," a "racial or religious group" including "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and "measures intended to prevent births within the group". In a 2022 assessment by the UN Human Rights Office, the United Nations (UN) stated that China's policies and actions in the Xinjiang region may be crimes against humanity, though did not use the term genocide. In 2020, 39 UN member states issued statements to the United Nations Human Rights Council criticizing China's policies, while 45 countries supported China's "deradicalization measures in Xinjiang" and opposed "the politicization of human rights issues and double standards". In December 2020, a case brought to the International Criminal Court was dismissed because the crimes alleged appeared to have been "committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute", meaning the ICC could not investigate them. In January 2021, the United States Department of State declared China's actions as genocide, and legislatures in several countries have passed non-binding motions doing the same, including the House of Commons of Canada, the Dutch parliament, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, the Seimas of Lithuania, and the French National Assembly. Other parliaments, such as those in New Zealand, Belgium, and the Czech Republic condemned the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs as "severe human rights abuses" or crimes against humanity.