A U.S. NGO has released a report in which experts from various parties assess the persecution of Uighurs by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang as a serious violation of the genocide Convention, which meets the criteria for genocide. The Chinese government bears “national responsibility” for this.
The report was released Monday (March 8) by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a Washington think tank. Dozens of experts in international law, genocide studies, Chinese ethnic policy and the Xinjiang region participated in the assessment. They reviewed and analyzed relevant evidence and information.
The experts concluded that the Chinese Communist government’s genocide against the Uighurs violates the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and that it bears “state responsibility” for it.
CNN quoted Azeem Ibrahim, head of a special project at the Institute for Innovation Strategy and Policy, as saying that there is “overwhelming” evidence to support its genocide allegations and that China “is a major global power whose leaders is the architect of genocide.”
China is a party to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Under the Convention, “the States Parties recognize genocide as a crime under international law, whether committed in Time of peace or in time of war, and undertake to prevent and punish it.
According to the Convention, genocide is defined as “the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The Convention defines five types of genocide: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; intentionally inflicting on the group conditions of Life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Institute for Innovation Strategy and Policy said that “there have been reports of selective death sentences for prominent Uighur leaders, in addition to long prison sentences specifically targeting the elderly, acts that have resulted in mass deaths” and that these actions by the Chinese government are consistent with the killings of group members listed in the Convention.
The report states that “Uyghurs were subjected to systematic torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including rape, sexual abuse and public humiliation, both inside and outside the camps,” which is consistent with the second item listed in the Convention, for which China is responsible.
The report also states that Communist authorities systematically detain Uyghurs, particularly men of childbearing age and community leaders, in uninhabitable conditions, and apply contraceptive measures to Uyghur women. In addition, authorities have imposed forced labor on Uyghurs. “In sum, China is ‘deliberately subjecting the group to living conditions that are designed to destroy all or part of its life.”
The report also notes that China is carrying out mass sterilizations of Uyghur women of childbearing age, and that as more Uyghur Parents are placed in internment camps, Uyghur children are being sent to a number of state-run orphanages to be raised in a standard Chinese-speaking environment. These practices are also consistent with the fourth and fifth acts of genocide listed in the Convention.
“The perpetration of these enumerated acts of genocide against the Uyghurs is necessarily attributable to China,” the report said, adding that “the breadth of ongoing genocide within a powerful one-party state demonstrates that China has failed to prevent genocide and further violated the Convention. “
Some international human rights organizations say millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are held in internment camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. They are allegedly subjected to human rights violations in the camps, including torture, forced sterilization, forced abortions, rape and sexual abuse, and political indoctrination.
China has consistently denied the mistreatment of Uighurs and the existence of detention camps, calling them vocational and technical Education centers designed to de-radicalize and help lift regional populations out of poverty.
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