NEW REPORT HOLDS CHINA RESPONSIBLE FOR UIGHURS GENOCIDE

Tue 09 March 2021:

The Chinese government has breached every single article of the UN genocide convention in its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and bears responsibility for committing genocide, according to a landmark legal report.

The 25,000-page report, The Uighurs Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention, is “based on an extensive review of the available evidence and application of international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground,” said US-based publisher Newlines Institute.

“The intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group is derived from objective proof, consisting of comprehensive state policy and practice, which President Xi Jinping, the highest authority in China, set in motion,” the report said.

The five acts are: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately 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.

As evidence, the report cited reports of mass deaths, selective death sentences, and long-term imprisonment of elders, systemic torture and cruel treatment including sexual abuse and torture, interrogations and indoctrination, the targeted detention of Uighur community leaders and people of childbearing age, forced sterilisation, family separation, mass labour transfer schemes, and the transfer of Uighur children to state-run orphanages and boarding schools.

The report said President Xi Jinping “launched a ‘People’s War on Terror’ in the region and made the Uighurs-concentrated areas the front line, arguing that extremism has taken root in Uyghur society.”

“Camp guards reportedly follow orders to uphold the system in place until ‘Kazakhs, Uighurs , and other Muslim nationalities, would disappear … until all Muslim nationalities would be extinct’,” it said.

“High-level officials gave orders to ‘round up everyone who should be rounded up’, ‘wipe them out completely … destroy them root and branch’, and ‘break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins’,” the report added.

Chinese officials have “likened the mass internment campaign to ‘eradicating tumors’ and even uprooting weeds hidden among crops, which require spraying ‘chemicals to kill them all’.”

In creating the report, all available and verifiable evidence was studied by dozens of experts on international law, genocide studies, Chinese ethnic policies and China, the institute said. It made no recommendations.

Uighurs issue

China has been widely accused of putting Uighurs into camps, and there have been reports of the forced sterilization of Uighur women.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), accuse Beijing of oppressing 12 million Uighurs in China, most of whom are Muslims.

Many Uighurs – around 1 million to 1.6 million, according to the World Uyghur Congress – have left China to live abroad.

China has repeatedly denied allegations that it is operating detention camps in its northwestern Xinjiang region, home to the Uighur community, claiming instead that it is “re-educating” Uighurs.

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent