Chi­nese offi­cials have admit­ted that birth rates have plum­met­ed among its eth­nic Uighurs, fuelling claims that Bei­jing is sub­ject­ing its Mus­lim minor­i­ty to a cam­paign of forced birth con­trol. Offi­cial sta­tis­tics show that in Xin­jiang, the north-west­ern province where most of the 10 mil­lion strong Uighur com­mu­ni­ty live, birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018. The fig­ures fol­low accu­sa­tions that Bei­jing is attempt­ing to reduce the Uighur pop­u­la­tion by threat­en­ing women with fines or spells in mass deten­tion camps if they flout harsh fam­i­ly plan­ning mea­sures. At least a mil­lion Uighurs are believed to have passed through the deten­tion camps in recent years, which Bei­jing insists are vol­un­tary schools to teach Uighurs of the dan­gers of Islam­ic extrem­ism. Human rights groups say they are used to erad­i­cate Uighur cul­ture, in tan­dem with forced abor­tion and ster­il­i­sa­tion poli­cies that amount to “demo­graph­ic genocide”.