The concentration camps are just one note in a project that is both more spatially and temporally extensive, temporally with just the latest stage in what academics have analyzed as China's decades-long, if not centuries-long, project of settler colonization and deliberate demographic change in the resource rich territory China refers to as Xinjiang, literally meaning “new frontier”.
The renowned scholar of colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, famously said, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism.” In the case of China's policies against the Uighurs, this question of genocide is not just abstract or metaphorical but imminent and literal.
In the UN genocide convention, as well as in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, genocide is defined as any one of the five following acts: one, killing; two, causing serious bodily or mental harm; three, infliction of conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction; four, imposition of measures intended to prevent births; or, five, forcible transfer of children. Any one of these listed acts, when conducted with an intention to destroy a people as a people, “in whole or in part”, qualifies as genocide when committed with the requisite genocidal intent.
In the case of the Uighurs, however, there is evidence of all five categories of genocidal acts having been committed, with reports of deaths in concentration camps; tortures, such as electrocution and waterboarding; forced starvation and exposure to diseases, including the coronavirus, in concentration and forced labour camps; a sterilization campaign, in which 80% of new intrauterine birth control devices in China were installed in Xinjiang, which constitutes less than 2% of the Chinese population; and, the separation of almost half a million children from their families and communities.
As for the question of intent, when officials describe Islam as an “ideological virus”, an “incurable malignant tumour”, and a “weed” infecting the “crops”, efforts at eradication are the logical extension.
Testifying to the seriousness of the crime, the genocide convention includes not simply an obligation to punish genocide after the fact, but an obligation on all states to prevent genocide. According to the International Court of Justice “a State's obligation to prevent [genocide], and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of...the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.” That threshold of serious risk has surely long been passed.
In 2014, the UN office on genocide prevention released a framework for identifying warning signs of genocide and other atrocity crimes. Virtually all of those signs are present in Xinjiang.
Having also worked on advocacy regarding the Rohingya genocide, which is now before both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, I saw how long states avoided recognizing that situation as genocidal or proto-genocidal in order to avoid triggering their duty to prevent, as states previously refused to recognize the Rwanda genocide even as it was unfolding in the sight of the eyes of the entire world in 1994.
Even in the face of compelling evidence, the capacity for denialism is great, as are the shame, repentance and horror in hindsight when “never again” is permitted to occur again and again.
Thank you.