A leading British human rights lawyer will set up an independent tribunal in London to investigate whether the Chinese government’s alleged human rights violations against Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.
The human rights lawyer is Geoffrey Nice, who led the prosecution of former Serbian President Milosevic for the Balkan wars and has cooperated with the International Criminal Court. He has been asked by the World Uyghur Congress to investigate “continuing atrocities and possible genocide” against the Uyghur people.
The tribunal is expected to disclose new evidence and testimony in hearings to be held over several days next year. Although the tribunal is not supported by the government, it is the latest attempt to hold China accountable for its treatment of Uighurs and other Turkic minorities. Since 2017, the Chinese government has engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on Uighurs and other Turkic minorities on the grounds of fighting terrorism and maintaining public order.
The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Chinese officials and entities involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. There have been reports that the Trump administration is considering officially labeling the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang as “genocide. More than 70 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have also urged the Trump administration to do so. U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Biden’s campaign has defined the situation in Xinjiang as “genocide.
Ness told The Associated Press on Wednesday that allegations of potential genocide in China are “questions that should be asked and answered,” but that such allegations have never been subject to public legal scrutiny.
Organizers of the tribunal are just beginning to gather evidence. They expect to receive a great deal of evidence from Uighurs in exile in the coming months. Several people who have worked as security guards in detention camps in Xinjiang will testify in the courtroom.
“At this point, the strongest evidence appears to be evidence of imprisonment and possibly forced sterilization,” Ness said.
A recent investigation by the Associated Press found that the Chinese government is systematically imposing family planning on Uighurs and other Muslims, apparently in an effort to reduce their population. The report found that authorities routinely subject ethnic minority women to pregnancy tests, forced insertions of intrauterine devices, sterilization, and abortions of thousands of people. Many were sent to internment camps for so-called “religious extremism,” while many others were put there simply because they had too many children.
Such forced sterilization may violate the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Ness said.
The Chinese government has yet to comment, but Chinese officials have repeatedly called the allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang “fabrications” and insisted that all of China’s ethnic minorities are treated equally.
China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, has also called the allegations made by Western media “the lie of the century” and has denied that nearly a million Uighurs have been detained in Xinjiang.
China claims that the camps are vocational education and training centers for Uighurs and that they are a preventive counterterrorism measure.
The court’s decision in London is not binding on any government.
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