China has committed Genocide Against Uyghur Muslims – U.S. Says

Dr. Mozammel Haque

 

The U.S. has declared that China has committed “Genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China.

 

President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State agreed with his predecessor’s declaration that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang.

 

“That would be my judgment as well,” said Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, when asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday if he agreed with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s genocide designation, reported by Christine Rousselle, Catholic News Agency (CAN).

 

On January 19, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he had “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.” Pompeo stated, “[t]he People’s Republic of China and the CCP must be held to account.” 

 

In a statement released on 19 January 2021, Pompeo said, “After a careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that since at least March 2017, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, reported in CITY A.M. published by Stefan Boscia

 

On Tuesday, Blinken said that the gravity and scope of the atrocities committed in Xinjiang against predominantly Muslim Uyghur and others has risen to the level of genocide. “The forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps; trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” he said, reported by Christine Rousselle, Catholic News Agency (CAN). 

 

Xinjiang, a region in China’s northwest nearly three times the size of France, is home to 23 million Turkic people including Uyghur, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities, reported in CITY.A.M. 

 

In the United Kingdom

On 12^th of January 2021 the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (First Secretary of State) Dominic Raab, MP said, “The evidence of the scale and severity of the human rights violations being perpetrated in Xinjiang against the Uyghur Muslims is now far-reaching. It paints a truly harrowing picture. Violations include the extrajudicial detention of over 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities in political re-education camps; extensive and invasive surveillance targeting minorities; systematic restrictions on Uyghur culture, education and, indeed, on the practice of Islam; and the widespread use of forced labour. The nature and conditions of detention violate basic standards of human rights. At their worst, they amount to torture and inhumane and degrading treatment, alongside widespread reports of the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women.

 

Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, continued, “Internment camps, arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture and forced sterilisation—all on an industrial scale. It is truly horrific—barbarism we had hoped was lost to another era is being practised today, as we speak, in one of the leading members of the international community.

 

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “We have a moral duty to respond. The UK has already played a leading role within the international community in the effort to shine a light on the appalling treatment of the Uyghurs and to increase diplomatic pressure on China to stop and to remedy its actions. I have made my concerns over Xinjiang clear directly to China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. We have led international joint statements on Xinjiang in the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee and the UN Human Rights Council. In the Third Committee, we brought the latest statement forward together with Germany in October last year and it was supported by 39 countries.

Cross-Party M.P.s took part in the debate and responded to the Statement on the Government’s response to the Forced Labour in Xinjiang, China. Many Members of the House spoke about genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

 

CITY A.M. reported on 12 January: UK sanctions China over ‘horrific’ treatment of Uyghur Muslims, reported by Stefan Boscia. 

 

That statement went to the House of Lords where Lords and Baroness discussed and debated and made Lords Amendment3 on Genocide.