Is China Committing Genocide?
Since 2017, as reports of the ongoing mass internment, torture, and subjugation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province have become more widespread. Americans and other members of the international community have grown rightfully concerned about the Chinese government’s rampant abuse of human rights. While the United States government along with a number of other Western nations have labelled the CCP’s actions a genocide, others including New Zealand, Australia, and Turkey still hesitate to use the term. Although these governments and leaders may be sympathetic to the Uyghur cause, they do not believe the Chinese government’s actions constitute a genocide because there has been not yet been any evidence of mass killings.
Origins of the Term
This belief stems from an inherent misunderstanding of the term both in its original intent and contemporary technical use under international law. The first use of the word genocide is attributed to Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, who defined it in book documenting Nazi atrocities published in 1944. According to Lemkin, genocide was "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves." In 1948, the United Nations, working off of Lemkin’s original definition, adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) otherwise known as the “Genocide Convention.” Having just witnessed the previously unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust, the international community was intent of never allowing such atrocities to occur again. It was the first human rights treaty in history unanimously adopted by the multinational body.
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944.
The binding treaty labels genocide “a crime under international law which they [the signatories] undertake to prevent and to punish” regardless of whether it is “committed in time of peace or in time of war.” The treaty also expanded upon Lemkin’s original definition and established clear legal parameters for declaring actions a genocide, parameters which continue to be used by bodies of international law today.
Parameters for declaring a genocide in the CPPCG.
Evaluating the Chinese Government’s Crimes
Based on this definition provided by the Genocide Convention, a treaty which is accepted as the definitive legal document on the issue by International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang are without a doubt genocide. While the convention states that if any of the five acts listed above are committed with intent to destroy a group then such actions constitute genocide, the Chinese government has gone beyond this by conducting actions that fulfill three of the five clauses: (B), (D), and (E). One could argue that the CCP has also committed crimes in violation of both (A) and (C) as well but such an argument is not necessary in order to conclude that the ongoing human rights violations in Xinjiang are a genocide.
Since 2017, more than 2 million Uyghurs have been detained in concentration camps without any form of due process and for “crimes'' as arbitrary as growing a beard (evidence of religious extremism according to Chinese government documents). In the camps, detainees have been subjugated to intense physical and psychological torture. Detainees are reportedly forced to hold stress positions for hours at time whale being inundated with party propaganda. This program of mass internment has destroyed lives, torn apart families, and ripped away the very foundations of Uyghur communities. These crimes certainly fulfill Clause (B) of Article II, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.”
The combination of mass internment of Uyghur men, restrictions on movement, and reproductive repression (forced birth control, abortions, and sterilization) has resulted in a horrifying drop in the Uyghur birthrate. Between 2017 and 2019, the birthrate fell 48.7% in Xinjiang, a drop which was the most severe decline in a population’s birthrate “in the 71 years since the United Nations began collecting global fertility statistics beating out even declines during the Syrian civil war and the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia.” Chinese regional authorities openly published these birthrate statistics until 2019 and at one point even bragged about as evidence of their successful policies. These crimes fulfill Clause (D) of Article II, “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Satellite footage showing the rapid expansion of a concentration camp near Dabancheng, Xinjiang.
As Uyghur men and women have been sent to concentration camps and in many cases sentenced to 20+ year prison sentences, their children have been taken into the custody of the Chinese state. Rather than send Uyghur children to live with relatives or stay in their community, the Chinese government has forcefully put thousands of Uyghur children in Han Chinese boarding schools. Once there, the Uyghur children are unable to see or contact their parents and are prohibited from speaking Uyghur. The children are raised as Han Chinese, speaking Mandarin and learning Chinese customs and history. These crimes fulfill Clause (E) of Article II, “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
While the Chinese government may not be using gas chambers, its ultimate goal is no different than that of the Nazis during the Holocaust. It seeks the wholesale erasure of a people and the very fibers of its community, language, culture, and history. Just as the international community had a moral obligation to act in 1941, we now have our own moral and legal obligation to do so as well.