China Xinjiang: First Independent Report on Uyghur Genocide Allegations Claims Evidence of Beijing’s ‘Intent to Destroy’ Muslim Minorities

Azeem Ibrahim, director of special initiatives at Newlines and co-author of the new report, said there was “overwhelming” evidence to support his claim of genocide.

“It is a major world power, whose leaders are the architects of a genocide,” he said.

Genocide convention

Article II of the convention states that genocide is an attempt to commit acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.

According to the convention, genocide can take place in five ways: killing members of the group; cause serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; impose measures to prevent births within the group; or the forcible transfer of children from the group to another group.

However, any establishment of an international criminal tribunal would require approval from the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent veto member, making any hearing into the genocide allegations in Xinjiang unlikely.

Although violating a single act of the Genocide Convention would constitute a finding of genocide, the Newlines report claims that the Chinese government has met all the criteria with its actions in Xinjiang.

“China’s policies and practices targeting Uyghurs in the region must be seen in their entirety, which amounts to an intention to destroy Uyghurs as a group, in whole or in part,” according to the report.

No specific punishment or punishment is provided for in the convention for states or governments determined to have committed genocide. But the Newlines report said that under the convention, the other 151 signatories have a responsibility to act.

“China’s obligations … to prevent, punish and not commit genocide are erga omnes, or are owed to the international community as a whole,” the report adds.

‘Clear and convincing’

International human rights lawyer Yonah Diamond, who worked on the report, said a common public misunderstanding of the definition of genocide was that evidence of mass murder or physical extermination of a people was needed. .

“The real question is, is there enough evidence to show that there is an intention to destroy the group as such – and that is what this report exposes,” he said. he declares.

The five definitions of genocide set out in the convention are examined in the report to determine whether the allegations against the Chinese government meet each specific criterion.

“Given the gravity of the violations in question … this report applies a clear and convincing standard of proof,” the report said.

The Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy was founded in 2019 as a non-partisan think tank by Fairfax University of America, with the aim of “strengthening US foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of different regions the world and their value systems. “It was previously known as the Center for Global Policy.

Thousands of eyewitness testimonies from Uyghur exiles and official Chinese government documents were among the evidence examined by the authors, Diamond said.

Between 1 million and 2 million people have been detained in as many as 1,400 extrajudicial internment centers across Xinjiang by the Chinese government since 2014, when it launched a campaign pointedly targeting Islamic extremism, the report said. .

The report details allegations of sexual assault, psychological torture, attempted cultural brainwashing and an unknown number of deaths in the camps.

“Uyghur detainees in internment camps are … deprived of their basic human needs, severely humiliated and subjected to inhuman treatment or punishment, including solitary confinement without food for long periods of time,” according to the report. report.

“Suicides have become so prevalent that inmates are required to wear ‘suicide-safe’ uniforms and are denied access to materials that may induce acts of self-harm.”

The report also attributes a dramatic drop in the region’s Uyghur birth rate – around 33% between 2017 and 2018 – to the alleged implementation of an official Chinese government program of sterilization, abortion and birth control, which in some cases was imposed on women without their consent.

During the crackdown, textbooks on Uyghur culture, history and literature were allegedly withdrawn from school classrooms in Xinjiang, according to the report. In the camps, inmates were forced to learn Mandarin and described being tortured if they refused or were unable to speak it.

Using public documents and speeches made by Communist Party officials, the report claimed responsibility for the alleged genocide lay with the Chinese government.

The researchers cited speeches and official documents in which Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are referred to as “weeds” and “tumors.” A government directive is said to have called on local authorities to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their ties and break their origins”.

“In summary, the persons and entities who commit the listed acts of genocide are state organs and agents under Chinese law,” the report said. “The commission of these enumerated acts of genocide … against the Uyghurs is therefore necessarily attributable to the Chinese state.”

Rian Thum, report contributor and Uyghur historian at the University of Manchester, said that 20 years from now people would regard the crackdown in Xinjiang as “one of the great acts of cultural destruction of the past century.”

“I think many Uyghurs will see this report as a long overdue recognition of the suffering they, their family, friends and community have endured,” Thum said.

‘The lie of the century’

The Chinese government has repeatedly defended its actions in Xinjiang, claiming that citizens now enjoy a high standard of living.

“(But) you can simultaneously wage a genocidal counterterrorism campaign,” said report contributor John Packer, associate professor at the University of Ottawa and former director of the office of the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities at The Hague.

UK Director of the Uyghur World Congress Rahima Mahmut, who was not involved in the report, said many countries “say (they) can’t do nothing, but they can.”

“These countries, the countries which signed the Genocide Convention, they have an obligation to prevent and to punish … I think that every country can act,” she said.

While the report team avoided making recommendations to maintain impartiality, co-author Ibrahim said the implications of his findings were “very serious.”

“This (is) not an advocacy document, we are not advocating any course of action. There were no activists involved in this report, it was purely carried out by legal experts, regional experts and experts. ethnic Chinese, ”he said.

But Packer said such a “grave breach of international order” in the world’s second largest economy raised questions about global governance.

“If that’s not enough to trigger some kind of action or even to take a stand, then what is really needed?” he said.