First independent report into Xinjiang genocide allegations claims evidence of...

[Stelio Kontos]

First independent report into Xinjiang genocide allegations claims evidence of Beijing's 'intent to destroy' Uyghur people

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/asia/...hnk/index.html

The Chinese government's alleged actions in Xinjiang have violated every single provision in the United Nations' Genocide Convention, according to an independent report by more than 50 global experts in international law, genocide and the China region.

The report, released Tuesday by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy think tank in Washington DC, claimed the Chinese government "bears state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur in breach of the (UN) Genocide Convention."

It is the first time a non-governmental organization has undertaken an independent legal analysis of the accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, including what responsibility Beijing may bear for the alleged crimes. An advance copy of the report was seen exclusively by CNN.

Up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been placed in a sprawling network of detention centers across the region, according to the US State Department, where former detainees allege they were subjected to indoctrination, sexually abused and even forcibly sterilized.
China denies allegations of human rights abuses, saying the centers are necessary to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

Speaking at a press conference on March 7, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said allegations of a genocide in Xinjiang "couldn't be more preposterous."

On January 19, the outgoing Trump administration declared the Chinese government was committing genocide in Xinjiang. A month later, the Dutch and Canadian parliaments passed similar motions despite opposition from their leaders.

Azeem Ibrahim, director of special initiatives at Newlines and co-author of the new report, said there was "overwhelming" evidence to support its allegation of genocide.

"This is a major global power, the leadership of which are the architects of a genocide," he said.

The four-page UN Genocide Convention was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and has a clear definition of what constitutes "genocide." China is a signatory to the convention, along with 151 other countries.
Article II of the convention states genocide is an attempt to commit acts "with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

There are five ways in which genocide can take place, according to the convention: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Since the convention was introduced in 1948, most convictions for genocide have occurred in the International Criminal Tribunals held by the UN, such as those for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, or in national courts. In 2006, former dictator Saddam Hussein was found guilty of genocide in a court in Iraq.

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

While violating just one act in the Genocide Convention would constitute a finding of genocide, the Newlines report claims the Chinese government has fulfilled all criteria with its actions in Xinjiang.

"China's policies and practices targeting Uyghurs in the region must be viewed in their totality, which amounts to an intent to destroy the Uyghurs as a group, in whole or in part," the report claimed.

A separate report published on February 8 by Essex Court Chambers in London, which was commissioned by the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, reached a similar conclusion that there is a "credible case" against the Chinese government for genocide.

No specific penalties or punishments are laid out in the convention for states or governments determined to have committed genocide. But the Newlines report said that under 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 owed to the international community as a whole," the report added.

Yonah Diamond, legal counsel at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, who worked on the report, said a common public misunderstanding about the definition of genocide was it required evidence of mass killing or a physical extermination of a people.

"The real question is, is there enough evidence to show that there is an intent to destroy the group as such -- and this is what this report lays bare," he said.
All five definitions of genocide laid out in the convention are examined in the report to determine whether the allegations against the Chinese government fulfill each specific criterion.

"Given the serious nature of the breaches in question ... this report applies a clear and convincing standard of proof," the report said.

The Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy was founded in 2019 as a nonpartisan think tank by the Fairfax University of America, with a goal to "to enhance US foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of the different regions of the world and their value systems." It was previously known as the Center for Global Policy.

Thousands of eyewitness testimonies from Uyghur 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 have allegedly been detained in as many as 1,400 extrajudicial internment facilities across Xinjiang by the Chinese government since 2014, when it launched a campaign ostensibly targeting Islamic extremism.

Beijing has claimed the crackdown was necessary after a series of deadly attacks across Xinjiang and other parts of China, which China has categorized as terrorism.

The report details allegations of sexual assaults, psychological torture, attempted cultural brainwashing, and an unknown number of deaths within the camps.
"Uyghur detainees within the internment camps are ... deprived of their basic human needs, severely humiliated and subjected to inhumane treatment or punishment, including solitary confinement without food for prolonged periods," the report claimed.

"Suicides have become so pervasive that detainees must wear 'suicide safe' uniforms and are denied access to materials susceptible to causing self-harm."

The report also attributed a dramatic drop in the Uyghur birth rate across the region -- down about 33% between 2017 and 2018 -- to the alleged implementation of an official Chinese government program of sterilizations, abortions and birth control, which in some cases was forced upon the women without their consent.

The Chinese government has confirmed the drop in the birth rate to CNN but claimed that between 2010 and 2018 the Uyghur population of Xinjiang increased overall.

During the crackdown, textbooks for Uyghur culture, history and literature were allegedly removed from classes for Xinjiang schoolchildren, the report said. In the camps, detainees were forcibly taught Mandarin and described being tortured if they refused, or were unable, to speak it.
Using public documents and speeches given by Communist Party officials, the report claimed responsibility for the alleged genocide lay with the Chinese government.

Researchers cited official speeches and documents in which Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are referred to as "weeds" and "tumors." One government directive allegedly called on local authorities to "break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins."
"In sum, the persons and entities perpetrating the enumerated acts of genocide are State organs and agents under Chinese law," the report said. "The commission of these enumerated acts of genocide ... against the Uyghurs are therefore necessarily attributable to the State of China."
Rian Thum, a report contributor and Uyghur historian at the University of Manchester, said in 20 years, people would look back on the crackdown in Xinjiang as "one of the great acts of cultural destruction of the last century."
"I think a lot of Uyghurs will take this report as a long overdue recognition of the suffering that they and their family and friends and community have gone through," Thum said.

The Chinese government has repeatedly defended its actions in Xinjiang, saying citizens now enjoy a high standard of life.
"The genocide allegation is the lie of the century, concocted by extremely anti-China forces. It is a preposterous farce aiming to smear and vilify China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference on February 4.

The detention camps, which Beijing refers to as "vocational training centers," are described by officials and state media as being part of both a poverty alleviation campaign and a mass deradicalization program to combat terrorism.

"(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 Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague.

World Uyghur Congress' UK director Rahima Mahmut, who was not involved in the report, said a lot of countries "say (they) cannot do anything, but they can."

"These countries, the countries that signed the Genocide Convention, they have an obligation to prevent and punish ... I feel every country can take action," she said.

While the report team avoided making recommendations to maintain impartiality, co-author Ibrahim said the implications of the its findings were "very serious."

"This (is) not an advocacy document, we're not advocating any course of action whatsoever. There were no campaigners involved in this report, it was purely done by legal experts, area experts and China ethnic experts," he said.

But Packer said such a "serious breach of the international order" in the world's second-largest economy raised questions about the global governance.
"If this is not sufficient to instigate some kind of action or even to take positions, then what actually is required?" he said.

Long read, but the question posed in the last couple sentences are interesting to ponder. Is there nothing the world is capable (or willing) to do to stop a repeat of what Nazis and Communists did in the 20th century? If millions can protest much smaller-scale abuses in Western countries, why aren't millions in the street to stop an actual genocide?

[zEmini]

Greed is the most powerful and dangerous sin in the world. Nothing we can do about it short of having the rest of the civilized world blacklist them all at once.

[Sorensen]

So what, nobody is going to oppose china because money mostly.

[Mihalik]

People don't care for the same reason they didn't care between 1936 and 1944. Out of sight, out of mind. The fact that Islamophobia is about as rampant in the West today as anti-semitism was in 1930's also doesn't help.

Also, keep in mind, nobody went to war with the Nazis to save the Jews.

[PC2]

China is doing evil things to the Uigurs that must be stopped but at the same time(IIRC) they did militarily lose the Xinjiang region over a century ago so it's not very realistic for the Uigurs to be wanting their autonomy back after so many years and decades have past, which has solidified China's claim. So even though China is overwhelmingly in the wrong for their treatment of the Uigurs it's also true that the Uigurs need to do a better a job at teaching their kids that they shouldn't resist and resent China as outsiders but should embrace biculturalism and work to change China from the inside. That's not to say a lot of Uigurs haven't already done that but based on my current understanding there's also a lot of them that are too angry so they haven't put any effort into reconciliation which causes China to clamp down on all of them harder and harder.

The Uigurs are correct to be mad at the Chinese government for screwing them over but the thing is the Chinese government also screws over hundreds of millions of their own Han people which means it's not a personal vandetta against Uigur culture, the CCP is shitty to anyone who doesn't worship them.

[Alex Moriati]

People don't care for the same reason they didn't care between 1936 and 1944. Out of sight, out of mind. The fact that Islamophobia is about as rampant in the West today as anti-semitism was in 1930's also doesn't help.

Also, keep in mind, nobody went to war with the Nazis to save the Jews.

on the contrary. islamophilia is rampant.

[Santti]

People don't care for the same reason they didn't care between 1936 and 1944. Out of sight, out of mind. The fact that Islamophobia is about as rampant in the West today as anti-semitism was in 1930's also doesn't help.

Also, keep in mind, nobody went to war with the Nazis to save the Jews.

Nazis hatred of Jews was no secret, but how much of it was known? From what little I seem to remember, the death camps were something of a surprise.

But you are not wrong. Nazis were attacking pretty much everyone around it, though, so that kind of aggression was understandably the main concern at the time.

[Felya]

on the contrary. islamophilia is rampant.

Those are some of the ones that do care... just not in a good way. The ‘average’ person doesn’t care...

Edit: I don’t mean that as some superiority or anything... I care and know about it... but, how am I different from those who don’t care? This post? I’m no better...

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Nazis hatred of Jews was no secret, but how much of it was known? From what little I seem to remember, the death camps were something of a surprise

They knew... you are correct in saying they were surprised, but it was due to the extent the camps went. They knew the basics, they just got more details than they wanted. US turned away boats of children from Germany... US knew what weapons on tools they had, because we sold it to them...

[Calfredd]

Those are some of the ones that do care... just not in a good way. The ‘average’ person doesn’t care...

If -philia is an extreme love of something and -phobia is an extreme fear or hate of something, I wonder what "indifference" is.

[Felya]

If -philia is an extreme love of something and -phobia is an extreme fear or hate of something, I wonder what "indifference" is.

Here is a song about it...

[Doctor Amadeus]

China has always had a problem similar to this, Tibet being a pretty damn good example, the only difference between then and now are alt-right extremist trying to use this nonsense to finger point. Nonsense like this belongs on the Epoch times.

This a political initiative not a human rights one

[PC2]

China has always had a problem similar to this, Tibet being a pretty damn good example, the only difference between then and now are alt-right extremist trying to use this nonsense to finger point. Nonsense like this belongs on the Epoch times.

This a political initiative not a human rights one

Criticizing the CCP is alt-right now? Liberals criticize China as well because the CCP is extremely illiberal.

[Shadowferal]

...here we go...

[Doctor Amadeus]

Criticizing the CCP is alt-right now? Liberals criticize China as well because the CCP is extremely illiberal.

When one thing is being purposely tied to another yes, throw in words like genocide it gains traction including with CNN, I can still condemn China without falling for fear China from the same sorts that have no problem with this same issue anywhere else. Especially here in the U.S.

And no China isn't anymore extremely Liberal than Russia.

[PickleballAce]

I hear the tankies and sinophants assembling.

[Spicy Chicken]

When one thing is being purposely tied to another yes, throw in words like genocide it gains traction including with CNN, I can still condemn China without falling for fear China from the same sorts that have no problem with this same issue anywhere else. Especially here in the U.S.

And no China isn't anymore extremely Liberal than Russia.

Please point to where anything on the scale of what’s happening in China is happening in the US. I’ll be waiting awhile because the US isn’t genociding it’s own citizens. Go dickride the CCP somewhere else.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Please point to where anything on the scale of what’s happening in China is happening in the US. I’ll be waiting awhile because the US isn’t genociding it’s own citizens. Go dickride the CCP somewhere else.

Half a million people have died of COVID do to the incompetence of Trump many of the same pretending to be outraged about this.

[Stelio Kontos]

Half a million people have died of COVID do to the incompetence of Trump many of the same pretending to be outraged about this.

Why do you keep trying to connect China committing genocide to American domestic politics?

Can you be a little less self-centered? The world doesn't literally revolve around the US, you do know that, right?

[PC2]

Half a million people have died of COVID do to the incompetence of Trump many of the same pretending to be outraged about this.

No because the number of deaths that are correlated/associated with a person or policy does not imply causation. You would have to prove that those 500k people wouldn't have died under different policies. Which if you look at other countries of a significant size that had different policies you would find that they also have a death toll of around .1% of the population as well. Which means there's no basis for saying those 500k people could've been saved by any policy that was implemented by any leader.

Also the virus came from China where the CCP initially covered it up so the fact that you attribute all of the causation to Trump and none to China is highly irrational.

[Doctor Amadeus]

No because the number of deaths that are correlated with a person or policy does not imply causation. You would have to prove that those 500k people wouldn't have died under different policies. Which if you look at other countries of a significant size that had different policies you would find that they also have a death roll of around .1% of the population as well. Which means there's no basis for saying those 500k people could've been saved by any policy that was implemented by any leader.

Not true, but I’ll stay on topic the point is half a million people died in the U.S under the same or worse conditions basically being used to suddenly vilify China because they’ve been targeted by Trump.

This is an issue but my point is that it’s political.

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Why do you keep trying to connect China committing genocide to American domestic politics?

Can you be a little less self-centered? The world doesn't literally revolve around the US, you do know that, right?

Because this is about domestic policy and throwing genocide into the conversation doesn’t change the fact China’s domestic policy have always been like this. I even gave an example about Tibet. So no just like the Middle East and countries who’s domestic policies I completely disagree with.

I’m not going to nation bash and I’m certainly not going to for a bunch of frauds in my opinion pumping this up here in the U.S for political reasons.