The Muslim Uyghurs live in East Turkestan.  As ethnic minorities, the Uyghurs are supposed to be exempt from the One-Child Policy.  In reality, they are subject to strict population control.  If they live in the countryside, Uyghurs are allowed three children; in the city, they are allowed two. Uyghurs who exceed this limit are subject to forced abortion, forced sterilization and other coercive measures.  

In November 2008, for example, Arzigul Tursun was six months pregnant with her third child. As a city dweller she was allowed only two children.  She was escorted to the hospital to undergo an abortion.  She had tried to escape, but returned because of threats that her family’s home and land would be confiscated. Because of the intervention of members of the United States Congress, she was released from the hospital and given permission to have her baby.  

In a related problem, the Chinese Communist Party is using “deception, pressure and threats” to transfer marriage-age Uyghur women out of East Turkestan to distant areas of China. Hundreds of thousands of young Uyghur women, ages 16 to 25, have been forcibly transferred to positions of “cheap slave labor and potential sex workers.” This transfer of Uyghur women out of East Turkestan coincides with an equally massive transfer of Han Chinese into East Turkestan. Uyghurs suspect that this transfer serves a dual purpose – to provide Chinese men with the wives they lack because of the One Child Policy, and to decimate the Uyghur population.