China’s brutal treatment of the Muslim Uighur population is by now well known. More than a million ethnic Uighur people–who are Muslims–have been detained in China’s Xinjiang region. In the camps, men, women and children are put through a “reeducation” program to assimilate them to traditional Chinese culture. Family members have disappeared. Arabic writing in shops and places of business has been replaced with Mandarin. Ethnically Han Chinese have been encouraged to settle in Xinjiang, a semi-autonomous province and the Uighur’s home. Recently-leaked documents and eyewitness accounts even prove that China has been forcibly sterilizing Uighur women.
Yet for the most part, the world continues to remain silent. There have been small efforts here and there, with the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act being perhaps the most explicit in nature. It stipulates that American foreign policy be tied to the situation with the Uighurs; despite its altruistic nature, this policy more likely stems from Trump’s continued power fight with China rather than any compassion for the Uighurs. Overall, most of the outcry has come from news outlets such as the New York Times (which has leaked many of the official documents that reveal China’s abuses) as well as grass roots efforts, such as the TikTok user who was later banned for making a video about the Uighur’s plight.
Critics are hesitant to label what China has done as genocide. No one has been explicitly murdered because they identify as Uighur (at least to public knowledge). Yet a cursory look at the definition of genocide indicates that this is very much a case of genocide.
The five defining criteria of genocide as per the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide include:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Up until it was discovered that China is forcibly sterilizing Uighur women (which is quite clearly criteria D), the case for genocide could have been legally debated. But what about criteria (B) and (C)? What else is “inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction physically” (criteria C) if not placing people in unsanitary internment camps?
I would make the argument that the Uighur’s treatment is genocide under criteria (B). The Uighur’s might be ‘physically’ safe (debatable) but how can there be any doubt that severe mental harm has come to the group? When one watches their family members being taken away, does this not cause mental harm? When one is forced to renounce their faith, does this not cause severe mental harm? When one is put under intense surveillance, does this not cause severe mental harm? How can psychological torture not be considered serious mental distress?
The “ambiguity” of what constitutes “serious mental harm” is no doubt what lends to confusion, doubt and denial. Without explicitly naming actions that could constitute “serious mental harm”, the criteria opens itself up to debate…and inaction. But this is a common problem in international and even domestic documents that protect human rights: despite their altruistic motives, they are ultimately designed to allow countries to dance around accusations and for the accusers to do nothing.
If it is so “nebulous”, then it would probably be better if the criteria of “serious mental harm” was not included at all in the Convention which, by the way, China ratified in 1983. It would be better if the Convention, and all conventions that seek to protect human rights, were made overwhelmingly explicit in their definitions in order to have more legal teeth. And also, is it not somewhat disgusting that one’s mental harm has to be debated by a group of privileged strangers? Is it not disgusting that a group of strangers must conclude that “enough” people have suffered mental harm in order to label it such?
The UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was recently asked whether the plight of the Uighur’s met the legal definition of genocide. He responded that the international community had to be “careful” before making such claims. Careful? No, it only has to be careful if using the term against one of the world powers. If there is nothing at stake for the world’s powers-at-be, the term is much more freely and acceptably used.
In the recent past, “successful” prosecution of genocide has occurred in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. But neither case involved a strong, developed country: the parties involved were all impoverished nations, nations where it wouldn’t be considered “horrific” to find something as backwards as genocide, nations where there wouldn’t be international ramifications if they were accused of committing such heinous crimes. China, with its seat on the UN Security Council and its massive role in international trade, is too powerful and dangerous a country to be accused so easily.
Tales of internment camps, forced factory labor, and Uighur women being forced to sleep with Han men are clearly not enough to bring real call to action. Flattened and distracted by the Coronavirus, fearful of China and tied to capitalism, fed on two decades of anti-Islamic rhetoric (non-Muslims) and racism/otherness (Muslims), and bolstered by a climate of selfishness and hate, national governments continue to stay (mostly) silent.
Perhaps China will stop just short of wiping out Uighur culture entirely. Perhaps it won’t stop and an entire way of life will disappear. Either way, capitalism and fear are allowing serious mental harm to millions of people. Cultural genocide is genocide, even if the members are still physically standing.
Sources
- https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf
- https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/03/uighurs-xinjiang-china-cultural-genocide-international-criminal-court/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45474279
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/u-s-enacts-new-law-condemning-chinas-treatment-of-uyghur-and-other-muslims/
