Once again, the concentration camps appear . . . and you must decide.
JUDGMENT:
Beyond reasonable doubt the People’s Republic of China committed torture and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs and, by the imposition of measures to prevent births intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as such, committed genocide.
China committed genocide against Uyghurs, independent tribunal rules
“Now there is no excuse for the international community to continue its silence on the Uyghur genocide. It is the legal obligation of all countries who signed the 1948 genocide convention to take legal action.”
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, quoted by the BBC, December 9, 2021.
Guilty of Genocide, Crimes against Humanity
LONDON – China’s government has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people, a public tribunal set up by a prominent British human rights lawyer concluded Thursday.
“The world needs to know about what Uyghurs are facing today,” said Muetter Iliqud, 24, who spoke at two public sessions of a special tribunal.
“A UN panel says the region resembles a massive internment camp, where more than one million Muslim minorities have been rounded up, detained, and forcibly indoctrinated by the Chinese regime. Witness accounts, satellite imagery and Communist Party documents reveal what appears to be the largest imprisonment of people on the basis of religion since the Holocaust.”
“Row by row there are hundreds of them seated on the ground, heads shaved, blindfolded, their hands are bound behind their backs as dozens of guards hover in SWAT uniforms.”
“This report concludes that the People’s Republic of China (China) bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) based on an extensive review of the available evidence and application of international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground.” FROM THE REPORT: “Acts of Genocide. While commission of any one of the Genocide Convention’s enumerated acts with the requisite intent can sustain a finding of genocide, the evidence presented in this report supports a finding of genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of each and every act prohibited in Article II (a) through (e).” “This report is the first independent expert application of the 1948 Genocide Convention to the ongoing treatment of the Uyghurs in China. It was undertaken by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in response to emerging accounts of serious and systematic atrocities in Xinjiang province, particularly directed against the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority, to ascertain whether the People’s Republic of China is in breach of the Genocide Convention under international law.”
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration concluded that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uighur ethnic group, delivering a forceful condemnation to Beijing over a mass repression campaign that has yet to prompt tough international action. The determination, which was announced in a statement Tuesday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accuses China of imprisoning, torturing and carrying out forced sterilization against the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group.
Parliament Declares Treatment of Uighurs “Genocide”
Canada’s House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly to declare China’s treatment of its Uighur minority population a genocide. The motion — which passed 266 to 0 — was supported by all opposition parties and a handful of lawmakers from the governing Liberal Party. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and most members of his cabinet abstained. The motion makes Canada just the second country after the United States to recognise China’s actions as genocide.
The Dutch parliament on Thursday became the first European legislature to call the Chinese treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority a “genocide.” “The detention camps where it is estimated that more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are locked up are so big that you can see them from space,” Sjoerdsma said before the vote, calling the encampment “the largest mass incarceration of ethnic minorities since World War II.”
The Belgian parliament on Tuesday recognized China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as crimes against humanity and warned of a “serious risk of genocide,” joining other governments and legislatures that have made similar designations. The vote in Brussels followed the Czech Senate’s 38-0 vote Monday for a motion declaring China’s policies toward Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities as amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region. The moves by the two legislatures follow those of other democratic parliaments — Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania — which determined that China’s policies in the XUAR constitute genocide. The U.S. government in January designated abuses in the region as part of a campaign of genocide, and the German parliament is conducting an inquiry into the allegations.
“We support democracy, as we will never forget the cruel lesson of living under occupation by a Communist regime for 50 years,” said Dovile Sakaliene, a lawmaker blacklisted by China and who sponsored the resolution.
“The work does not stop here. We cannot continue business as usual with China while these atrocities continue. The government must now act urgently to ensure our supply chains are not tainted by goods made with Uyghur forced labour.” — Nusrat Ghani, the motion’s author and a former Conservative minister
The House of Commons has declared for the first time that genocide is taking place against Uyghurs and others in north-west China. More than a million people are estimated to have been detained at camps in the region of Xinjiang.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution saying China’s treatment of mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking indigenous ethnic groups, such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, amounts to “crimes against humanity” and holds a “serious risk of genocide.” The resolution says the Uyghur community in China “has been systematically oppressed by brutal measures, including mass deportation, political indoctrination, family separation, restrictions on religious freedom, cultural destruction and the extensive use of surveillance.” It also says there is “credible evidence about birth-prevention measures and the separation of Uyghur children from their families amount to crimes against humanity and represent a serious risk of genocide.” The document calls on the Chinese government to put an “immediate end” to the practice of arbitrary detention without charge, trial, or conviction for criminal offenses “targeted” against Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic peoples, and to close all camps and detention centers and “immediately and unconditionally” release all of those detained under the practices.
The government of China has taken extreme measures to prevent accurate information about the situation in Xinjiang from being documented, and finding reliable information about life inside the internment camps is particularly difficult. Between October 2019 and May 2021, Amnesty International interviewed dozens of former detainees and other people who were present in Xinjiang since 2017, most of whom had never spoken publicly about their experiences before. The testimonies of former detainees represent a significant portion of all public testimonial evidence gathered about the situation inside the internment camps since 2017. The evidence Amnesty International has gathered provides a factual basis for the conclusion that the Chinese government has committed at least the following crimes against humanity: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution.
Human Rights: Office of the Commissioner — Findings:
44. The Government has claimed that “attendees are free to join or quit programs at any time.” Consistent accounts obtained by OHCHR, however, indicate a lack of free and informed consent to being placed in the centres; that it is impossible for an individual detained in such a heavily guarded centre to leave of their own free will; and that a stay in a VETC facility is, from the concerned individual’s perspective, of indefinite nature, the end of which is only determined by meeting undefined criteria as evaluated by the authorities. As such, given that placement in the VETC facilities is not voluntary and the individuals placed in such centres appear to have had no choice, placements in VETC facilities amount to a form of deprivation of liberty. 143. Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR . . . 145. The treatment of persons held in the system of so-called VETC facilities is of equal concern. Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. 151. OHCHR recommends to the Government of China that it: (i) Takes prompt steps to release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in XUAR, whether in VETCs, prisons or other detention facilities. . . . 153. States should further refrain from returning members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities to China who are at risk of refoulement and provide humanitarian assistance, including medical and psycho-social support, to victims in the States in which they are located.
A UN report accusing China of “serious human rights violations” and possible crimes against humanity in the detention and torture of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang has provoked anger from many around the world.
“This is genocide, these are crimes against humanity that meet all the legal definitions in the book . . . it’s not ‘maybe,’ this is something that is already happening.”
— Nury Turkel, an Uyghur attorney and chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
Slowly Disappear
This report builds on the Museum’s March 2020 announcement that there was a reasonable basis to believe that the CCP had perpetrated the crimes against humanity of persecution and of imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty against Uyghurs. This report analyzes additional information available in English in the public domain concerning the treatment of China’s Uyghur community in Xinjiang, and finds there is now a reasonable basis to believe that the crimes against humanity of forced sterilization, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, and forcible transfer are also being committed. The impunity with which the Chinese government has been able to commit these crimes thus far cannot persist. The future of a people may depend on swift, coordinated action by global actors. This report should serve as a clarion call for action to protect the Uyghur community.
The Chinese government’s oppression of Turkic Muslims is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years has reached unprecedented levels. As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities, which include “political education” camps, pretrial detention centers, and prisons. Courts have handed down harsh prison sentences without due process, sentencing Turkic Muslims to years in prison merely for sending an Islamic religious recording to a family in Uyghur. Detainees and prisoners are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, cultural and political indoctrination, and forced labor. The oppression continues outside the detention facilities: the Chinese authorities impose on Turkic Muslims a pervasive system of mass surveillance, controls on movement, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance, cultural and religious erasure, and family separation.
Madame High Commissioner, I have the honour of delivering this cross-regional joint statement on behalf of 44 countries. We are gravely concerned about the human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Credible reports indicate that over a million people have been arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang and that there is widespread surveillance disproportionately targeting Uyghurs and members of other minorities and restrictions on fundamental freedoms and Uyghur culture. There are also reports of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, forced sterilization, sexual and gender-based violence, and forced separation of children from their parents by authorities. We also share the concerns expressed by UN Special Procedures in their March 29 statement on alleged detention, forced labour and transfers of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities and in a letter published by UN experts describing collective repression of religious and ethnic minorities. We urge China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers, including the High Commissioner, and to urgently implement the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s 8 recommendations related to Xinjiang, including by ending the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities. Finally, we continue to be deeply concerned about the deterioration of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong under the National Security Law and about the human rights situation in Tibet. We call on Chinese authorities to abide by their human rights obligations. Thank you.
