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China at Extermination and Denial Stages in Uyghur Genocide, Report Finds (www.justiceforall.org)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48071860

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A new report by Genocide Watch, a rights group, concludes that the Chinese Communist Party’s policies against Uyghur Muslims meet multiple advanced stages of genocide under international law.

The report finds that the Chinese government’s actions in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan aka the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region span Stages 3, 8, 9, and 10 of genocide. These include systematic discrimination, mass persecution through detention and torture, exterminatory acts such as mass rape and the removal of Uyghur children, and ongoing denial by Chinese authorities and their international defenders.

Genocide Watch documents the use of mass detention camps, forced political indoctrination, bans on the Uyghur language, widespread destruction of mosques, forced labor programs, coercive population control policies, and the separation of Uyghur children from their families into Mandarin-only institutions. The report warns that these acts constitute both genocide and crimes against humanity under the Genocide Convention.

“This report removes any remaining ambiguity,” said Arslan Hidayat, Team Lead of the Save Uyghur Campaign. “Genocide Watch is clear that what is happening to Uyghurs is not cultural policy or counterterrorism. It is a coordinated campaign that has reached the extermination and denial stages of genocide. Governments that continue business as usual with Beijing are choosing complicity over accountability.”

[...]

“These recommendations are not radical. They are the minimum legal and moral obligations of states that claim to uphold human rights,” said Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, President of Justice For All. “The stages of genocide identified in this report are a warning to the world. History will judge whether governments acted when the evidence was undeniable or looked away while an entire people were erased.”

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[–] 20 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I disagree... beyond just saying shit, the actual biggest problem is that no one (west, east, whatever) can do shit because that would basically require direct military intervention... which would probably have a much higher human cost.

At what point is the cost of negligence too high? At what point is it ethically valid to commit the lives of troops from your country to change the behavior of a government of another country within its own borders?

Historically, the answer is never. No country will commit its own military in this way without an initial military provocation, except when using the human rights abuses as a pretext for territorial acquisition.

It's still important to talk about the truth of these atrocities, to not let their perpetrators pretend they're not happening. But... the reality of this will not change without regime change in the PRC.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Okay, serious question because I'm fairly knowledgeable about political science/philosophy but completely ignorant re military and covert operations: is this a situation where underhanded tactics like assassination of local political figures, etc. would be useful, or is that just ignorant Hollywood nonsense?

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago*

    Uyghurs in China are being rounded up and forced into labor camps

    I think this set of photos of one of the camps in Xinjiang is particularly illustrative:

    This isn't some short-term persecution for the sake of political influence, it's not the whim of a few local officials, and it's not just basic racism. This is a systemic problem, not just with the government but with Chinese culture broadly. Uyghurs are seen as inferior, and therefore it is acceptable to use them as labor or worse. What's being done to these people is akin to the African slave trade of the 1800s, it's just being done mostly within China's borders. It is exploitation at an industrial scale plotted by the highest levels of political power and executed ruthlessly.

    To change this would require forcing large portions of the Chinese population to see the Uyghurs as equals, as fellow humans with a right to self-determination, and then act on that conviction to change the government.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    With China being a nuclear country, military intervention is out of the question. If we omit the question how strong China actually is. So the only option left is political and economical pressure and sanctions. Which will never happen. Also, as said, west doesn't have a problem with genocide, perhaps it's useful when our "enemies" commit it, so we have a leverage, no matter how weak it is.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    With China being a nuclear country, military intervention is out of the question.

    Yeah, pretty much. Even a non-nuclear conflict at any level that would affect regime change would be devastating.

    So the only option left is political

    Even if the entirety of the UN got together and unanimously condemned the PRC for the treatment of Uyghurs, I doubt they would care. China is about as likely to change domestic policy based on external political pressure as they are to collectively tap-dance to the moon.

    and economical pressure and sanctions.

    Effective economic pressure requires a position of economic superiority. China is the second largest economy in the world, which means they are inextricably intertwined with the largest economy (the US) and so nobody has that position.

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