Will the international community join in condemning China’s Uighur genocide?

By | January 28, 2021

WASHINGTON, D.C. January 29 (C-Fam) In one of the last acts of the outgoing Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared China guilty of genocide against its Uighur Muslim minority, a stance also endorsed by President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In recent years, explosive reports have emerged of abuses committed by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uighur Muslim minority, including detention in “reeducation camps,” forced abortions, and mass sterilizations.

International institutions have been much more muted in their response, at most issuing “a few meaningless statements that do not follow with decisive actions to change the fate of the targeted communities.”

A few countries have used UN platforms, including the Universal Period Review (UPR), a human rights mechanism under the Human Rights Council, to sound the alarm.

In China’s first review by the UPR in 2009, Canada’s opening statement “expressed deep concern about reports of arbitrary detention of ethnic minorities members” including Uighurs.  The Czech Republic also mentioned the Uighurs while recommending that China review its laws to ensure freedom of religion and protection of minority groups.

At China’s second UPR in 2013, the United States urged China to “protect the rights of ethnic minority groups,” including Uighurs, “in accordance with China’s Constitution and international human rights commitments.” Switzerland also encouraged China to allow independent human rights experts to visit Uighur and Tibetan areas, and Canada and the Czech Republic reiterated their concerns from the previous cycle.

In China’s most recent review in 2018 the clamor was growing.  Six countries issued a total of eight recommendations addressing the Uighurs specifically.  Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, Germany, and Finland were now taking up the issue, predominantly focused on the arbitrary detention of Uighurs in camps. The speakers were from Western Europe, Australia, and Canada, raising questions about why majority-Muslim countries were not vocal in support of China’s Muslim minority.

By this point, China been accused of committing “cultural genocide” against the Uighurs, a term not formally defined in international law.  But in July 2020, researcher Adrian Zenz reported that the Chinese government’s activities met the UN’s definition of genocide due to its policies dedicated to “systematically suppress birthrates and depress population growth” among Uighurs.

China has a long history of forcibly suppressing birthrates, most notably by its brutal one-child policy.  In 2013, it was reported that four Uighur women were forced to undergo abortions despite the fact that “[a]s ethnic minorities, the Uighurs [were] supposed to be exempt from the one-child policy.”

China will next face the UPR in November 2023, where the outcry on behalf of the Uighurs is likely to be significantly stronger.  Meanwhile, the new revelations of coercive fertility reduction against the Uighurs has continued to shift public opinion.

In October, 39 countries led by Germany have issued a statement expressing “grave concerns” about China’s human rights abuses in the General Assembly, a marked increase over a 23-country statement the previous year.  An opposing statement, led by Cuba, was made in defense of China’s human rights record.  However, the group supporting China had decreased by sixteen countries since the 2019.

China’s size and power have made UN entities reluctant to provoke it, which had devastating consequences when the World Health Organization was slow to respond to the growing COVID-19 pandemic and instead repeated the Chinese government’s talking points.  For many countries, defending China on human rights issues could mean keeping a valuable trading partner.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has come under criticism for sidestepping the issue, although in light of the U.S. declaration, he will likely face increased pressure to speak out.

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