Campaigners have long accused China of abuse in the Far-West region.
Geneva:
A UN report detailing serious rights abuses by China in its Xinjiang region found possible crimes against humanity, but not genocide – a torture crime that is difficult to prove in international law.
As fallout from the report continues on Saturday, some countries are considering how they can take the findings further.
The crime of genocide not only serves to destroy a particular group, but also, critically, has a second component: proven intent.
Amnesty International Australia’s Nikita White told AFP the findings of the UN report were “really strong and really grim”.
However, “in order to be accused of genocide, the United Nations has to prove its intent. And it is really difficult … when access to Xinjiang is restricted”.
‘Available information’
Campaigners have long accused China of abuses in the far-western region, including the detention of more than a million Uighurs and other Muslims and the forced sterilization of women.
And lawmakers in the United States and other Western countries have meanwhile openly accused China of committing genocide against the Xinjiang minorities.
For US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the report “deepens and reinforces our grave concern about the ongoing genocide”.
There were hopes that the UN findings would give additional credibility to such allegations, which Beijing vehemently denied.
The long-awaited United Nations report documented a string of violations, found the torture allegations to be credible, cited forced medical treatment, and said that a large proportion of the Muslim population was involved in so-called Vocational Education and Training Centers (VETCs). ) was placed through.
It states that the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention may constitute “international crime, especially crimes against humanity”.
Crimes against humanity rank as atrocities crimes in international law along with genocide and war crimes.
But the report did not mention the word genocide, something that Beijing was quick to do.
“Even this unreliable unreliable report dares to exaggerate the so-called misconceptions of genocide,” China’s foreign ministry said.
UN Rights Office spokeswoman Raveena Shamdasani stressed that “we are not making any decisions on that specific issue on our own”.
“The available information, assessed by our own standards, does not enable us to do so at this time,” he told AFP.
But for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the report “deepens and reinforces our grave concern about the ongoing genocide”.
Where to go next is decided in the session of the United Nations Human Rights Council starting 12 September.
‘Intention to destroy’
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted after World War II, codified criminal genocide for the first time.
It was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.
It defines “acts committed with the intention of destroying wholly or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
This can happen through killing group members, but also through other means, including measures to prevent birth, forcibly relocating children, or intentionally intended to physically destroy a group’s living conditions. generating is involved.
However, the definition includes not only the act done, but also the intent, which is “the most difficult element to determine”, according to a UN factsheet on the convention.
“Cultural destruction is not enough,” it says.
“It is this particular intent … that makes the crime of genocide so irresistible.”
Report Details Population Change
While the report did not mention genocide, it did document population changes in the region using Chinese official data.
Numbering more than one from 10 in 1953, Han Chinese are now on par with Uighurs, largely due to westward migration, as a result of government incentives.
The report detailed recent changes to birth control policy, which allowed Han more reproductive rights in Xinjiang than before, and documented the “unusual and stark” halving of the birth rate in the region, Especially among Uighurs.
It also commented on the “unusually sharp increase” in the sterilization rate in the region, which is more than seven times the average across China.
“There are credible indications of reproductive rights violations through forced enforcement of family planning policies since 2017,” it concluded.
It also noted that controversial VETCs were established in the region to, in China’s words, “eliminate the breeding ground” for the spread of religious extremism.
Threat of genocide?
The United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention, based in New York, assesses whether there is a risk of atrocity crimes occurring in a particular situation with the aim of preventing or preventing such crimes.
The Uighur Human Rights Project advocacy NGO wants the office to conduct an immediate risk assessment – including genocide – after the report.
“Although (the report) does not call genocide, I think Uighur groups or researchers would call it genocide,” the group’s Peter Irwin told AFP.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)