China Xinjiang: First independent report on Uighur genocide allegations affirms evidence of ‘intent to destroy’ Beijing’s 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.

“This is a great global 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 the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.

There are five ways in which genocide can occur, according to the convention: by killing members of the group; cause serious physical or mental damage to the group members; deliberately inflicting calculated living conditions to cause physical destruction in whole or in part; imposition of measures to prevent births within the group; or forced transfer of children from the group to another group.

However, any establishment of an International Criminal Court would require the approval of the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent member with veto power, making any hearing on the genocide allegations in Xinjiang unlikely.

Although the violation of just one act of the Genocide Convention constitutes a finding of genocide, the Newlines report states that the Chinese government has met all the criteria with its actions in Xinjiang.

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

No specific penalty or punishment is stipulated in the convention for states or governments that have committed genocide. But the Newlines report said that, according to 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,” added the report.

‘Clear and convincing’

Yonah Diamond, legal advisor to the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, who worked on the report, said that a common public misunderstanding about the definition of genocide was that evidence of mass murder or physical extermination of a people was required.

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

All 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 seriousness of the violations in question … this report applies a clear and compelling pattern of evidence,” said the report.

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 “enhancing US foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of different regions of the world and their systems of values. “Previously, it was known as Center for Global Policy.

Thousands of eyewitnesses to Uighur exiles and official Chinese government documents were among the evidence considered by the authors, Diamond said.

According to the report, between 1 million and 2 million people reportedly have been detained in 1,400 extrajudicial detention centers in Xinjiang by the Chinese government since 2014, when they launched a campaign that ostensibly aimed at Islamic extremism.

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

“Uighur prisoners 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 prolonged periods,” the report said.

“Suicides have become so widespread that detainees must wear ‘suicide insurance’ uniforms and do not have access to materials that are likely to cause self-harm.”

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

During the crackdown, textbooks on Uighur culture, history and literature were reportedly taken out of classes for Xinjiang students, the report said. In the camps, detainees learned Mandarin by force and were described as tortured if they refused or were unable to speak it.

Using public documents and speeches by Communist Party officials, the report claimed that the Chinese government was responsible for the alleged genocide.

The researchers cited speeches and official documents in which Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are called “weeds” and “tumors”. A government directive allegedly asked local authorities to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and their origins”.

“In short, the people and entities that perpetrate the listed acts of genocide are state organs and agents under Chinese law,” the report said. “The practice of these listed acts of genocide … against the Uighurs is, therefore, necessarily attributable to the State of China.”

Rian Thum, a report contributor and Uighur historian at the University of Manchester, said that in 20 years people would look back on the repression in Xinjiang as “one of the great acts of cultural destruction of the last century”.

“I think many Uighurs will consider this report as an acknowledgment of the suffering that they and their families and friends and community have gone through,” said Thum.

‘The lie of the century’

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

“(But) you can simultaneously have an anti-terrorism campaign that is genocidal,” said report contributor John Packer, associate professor at the University of Ottawa and former director of the OSCE Office of the High Commissioner for National Minorities in The Hague.

UK Uyghur World Congress director Rahima Mahmut, who was not involved in the report, said many countries “say they can’t do anything, but they can”.

“These countries, the countries that signed the Genocide Convention, have an obligation to prevent and punish … I feel that all countries can act,” she said.

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

“This is not a defense document, we are not advocating any course of action. There were no activists involved in this report, it was purely done by legal experts, experts in the field and ethnic experts from China,” he said.

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

“If that is not enough to instigate some kind of action or even to take positions, what is really needed?” he said.