The Chinese government has violated all articles of the UN genocide convention in its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and is responsible for committing genocide, according to a historic legal report.
The 25,000-word report, published by a non-partisan thinktank based in the United States, is one of the first independent, non-governmental legal examinations of China’s treatment of Uighurs under the 1948 genocide convention.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has vehemently denied committing atrocities and abuses against the Uighur Muslim minority, despite the growing body of evidence.
Reports on Uighurs led to increased international outrage and diplomatic and economic isolation. The United States government has already described the persecution of Uighurs as genocide.
In Beijing on Monday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters that the allegations of genocide in Xinjiang “could not be more absurd”. “It is a rumor made with ulterior motives and a total lie,” said Wang.
According to the UN convention, signed by 152 countries, including China, a genocide decision can be made if one of the parties violates any of the five defined acts. Tuesday’s report from the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy found that the CCP violated all of them and accused the party of clearly demonstrating an “intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
“The intention to destroy Uighurs as a group is derived from objective evidence, consisting of comprehensive state policies and practices, which President Xi Jinping, the highest authority in China, has put into action,” said the report.
The five acts are: killing members of the group; cause serious physical or mental damage to the group members; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to cause total or partial physical destruction; imposition of measures to prevent births within the group; and the forced transfer of children from the group to another group.
As evidence, the report cited reports of mass deaths, selective death sentences and long-term imprisonment for the elderly, systemic torture and cruel treatment, including sexual abuse and torture, interrogations and indoctrination, the selective detention of Uighur community leaders and people in reproductive age, forced sterilization, family separation, mass work transfer schemes and the transfer of Uighur children to state-run orphanages and boarding schools.
“The persons and entities that perpetrate the acts of genocide mentioned above are all agents or organs of the state – acting under the effective control of the state – expressing the intention to destroy the Uighurs as a group within the meaning of Article II of the Genocide Convention” the executive summary.
In creating the report, all available and verifiable evidence was studied by dozens of experts in international law, genocide studies, Chinese ethnic policies and China, the institute said. He made no recommendations.
The report is released in the middle of the CCP’s most important annual political meetings, known as the “two sessions”, when the main legislative body meets to approve the new legislation and when senior ministers appear in the press.
China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang is expected to answer questions on Thursday. However, all press conferences are highly managed, with questions analyzed in advance.