MESSAGE
| DATE | 2021-01-19 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Another Trump step in the right direction ...
|
U.S. Says China Is Committing Genocide Against Uighur Muslims
Michael R. Gordon and Eva Xiao
9-11 minutes
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration concluded that China has committed
“genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uighur ethnic group,
delivering a forceful condemnation to Beijing over a mass repression
campaign that has yet to prompt tough international action.
The determination, which was announced in a statement Tuesday by
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accuses China of imprisoning, torturing
and carrying out forced sterilization against the Uighurs, a Muslim
minority group.
“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the
systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state,” Mr.
Pompeo said. He said that Communist Party authorities “are engaged in
the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and
religious minority group.”
The genocide designation, which also applies to other minority groups in
Xinjiang, doesn’t carry any automatic legal consequences, but it puts
pressure on other nations, and U.S. allies in particular, to consider
sanctions and take other steps to condemn Beijing’s policies.
Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of
state, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that he
agreed that “forcing men, women and children into concentration camps”
constituted genocide.
He added that the incoming administration would look at ways to express
its disapproval, including barring the import of products made with
forced labor in China and not exporting technology that China can use to
further repression at home.
Striking other themes that suggested the Biden administration would take
a firm stance in managing relations with Beijing strained by
geopolitical rivalry and tensions over technology and trade, Mr. Blinken
denounced Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and said the U.S. should
strive to “outcompete China.”
The Chinese Embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese government has in the past denied mistreating the Uighur
population, who mainly live in the Xinjiang region, and defended its
program of detaining large numbers of Uighurs as necessary to root out
terrorism and provide job-training.
Accusations of genocide by the State Department are rare, and while the
State Department has criticized China’s actions in Xinjiang in recent
years, the genocide declaration came on the Trump administration’s last
day. Mr. Pompeo said that he arrived at the determination following a
careful review of the facts.
First Detention, Now Demolition: China Remakes Its Muslim Region
0:00 / 8:35
8:35
First Detention, Now Demolition: China Remakes Its Muslim Region
First Detention, Now Demolition: China Remakes Its Muslim Region
After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang,
Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the
region's culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to
engineer a society loyal to Beijing. Photo illustration: Sharon Shi.
Video: Clément Bürge (Originally published March 20, 2019)
After a series of bombings and other attacks that Beijing attributed to
militant Islamic terrorists in the last decade, China embarked on a mass
surveillance and detention program of Uighurs and other Muslims. Since
late 2016, authorities in Xinjiang have built thousands of police
stations, installed billions of dollars in surveillance technology and
set up internment camps that the U.S. says have incarcerated more than 1
million Uighurs.
The Trump administration in recent months has placed sanctions on
Chinese officials and agencies involved in the crackdown and last week
banned imports of cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang.
U.S. condemnation of China’s treatment of Uighurs has been joined at
times by other Western governments. In response Beijing has mounted an
international campaign to justify its actions and pressure foreign
governments. Many developing nations, including in the Muslim world,
have declined to condemn Chinese policies in Xinjiang, hampering
collective action by the United Nations and other international bodies.
A 2019 image of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kashgar, in China's
western Xinjiang region, where most Uighurs live.
Photo: greg baker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Members of Congress as well as human rights and Uighur activists said
the U.S. genocide declaration could prod other countries to follow suit
and lead to more coordinated international action. More than 150
countries, including China, are signatories of a United Nations
convention that calls for the trial and punishment of those who commit
genocide.
“We hope that this designation will lead to real strong actions to hold
China accountable and bring an end to China’s genocide,” said Salih
Hudayar, the Washington, D.C.-based prime minister of a self-declared
government-in-exile for East Turkistan, the name many Uighurs use to
refer to their homeland. His group, he said, has pushed for the
designation since 2018.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said he hopes that “today’s designation will motivate
the nations, businesses, and people of the world to reconsider the ways
they entangle themselves with a brutal, communist dictatorship that is
guilty of committing genocide against its own people.”
The last time the State Department leveled the accusation of genocide
was in 2016 when then Secretary of State John Kerry said that Islamic
State was responsible for genocide against Yazidis, Christians and
Shiite Muslims in areas that the military group controlled.
In supporting the latest genocide declaration, some questioned the
timing and said that the Trump administration’s preference for
unilateral action had undercut the U.S.’s ability to marshal
international support against China.
“There is a strong case to be made here,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a
New Jersey Democrat who served as the top State Department official for
human rights during the Obama administration. “But a serious Secretary
of State would have made this decision earlier. It’s pretty clear that
he wants credit for making the statement without the responsibility to
build a global consensus or to figure out what the consequences should be.”
Eric Schwartz, the president of advocacy group Refugees International,
said Mr. Pompeo should also have made a similar determination that
Myanmar has committed genocide against the Rohingya, another Muslim
population.
Former national security adviser John Bolton accused President Trump of
being indifferent to the plight of the Uighurs, writing in his book that
Mr. Trump spoke approvingly to Chinese President Xi Jingping about
building internment camps for the group. Mr. Trump’s goal, Mr. Bolton
wrote, was to remove an obstacle for a possible trade agreement.
Mr. Trump denied that allegation in a June interview with The Wall
Street Journal and described Mr. Bolton as a liar.
In Tuesday’s statement, Mr. Pompeo said that the State Department has
exhaustive documentation of China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang
and that since March 2017 repression has escalated against Uighurs as
well as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic and religious groups in Xinjiang.
As part of Beijing’s campaign, many Uighurs and other minorities have
been forced to attend classes promoting Communist Party rule, lessons in
Chinese language and job training skills. Since 2017, thousands of
mosques and other religious sites across Xinjiang have been razed,
according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank
which analyzed satellite imagery.
According to Adrian Zenz, a German scholar and critic of Beijing’s
ethnic policies, Chinese authorities are also separating Uighur families
in Xinjiang, with the children of arrested or detained individuals
sometimes sent to state-run boarding schools and orphanages.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon-at-wsj.com and Eva Xiao at
eva.xiao-at-wsj.com
--
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