Are Uyghurs Slowly Disappearing From Xinjiang?

In November 2021, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide published its new report “To Make Us Slowly Disappear”: The Chinese Government’s Assault on the Uyghurs, providing their assessment of the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The report concludes that the Chinese government may be committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Furthermore, according to its findings, the Chinese government is failing in its legal obligation to prevent the crime of genocide.

Among others, the report confirms that publicly available information indicates that the Chinese authorities have caused serious mental and bodily harm to members of the Uyghur community through “the forced sterilization of Uyghur women; the forced placement of IUDs; the detention of members of the Uyghur community; the physical abuse of detainees; the forced separation of Uyghur families, including children, whether by transfer or detention; and the forced labor extracted from Uyghurs held in detention as well as those recently released or otherwise not detained.” Further, the report indicates the use of rape and sexual violence as yet another way of causing serious or bodily harm upon the members of the community.

The report further identifies several ways the community is subjected to measures intended to prevent births within the group, including: “forced sterilization of Uyghur women, and the forced or otherwise coerced implantation of IUDs in circumstances where they cannot be removed without surgical intervention approved by the state.” These methods are said to be leading to the slow disappearance of the community from Xinjiang.

The new reports adds to the growing number of legal analyses of the situation of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The report comes months after, in February 2021, a similar conclusion was made by lawyers from Essex Court Chambers, who in their legal opinion identified evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity. In March 2021, Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in the U.S., published a new report co-authored by over 50 global experts in human rights, war crimes and international law, analyzing the situation of the Uyghur community in Xinjiang against the legal definition of genocide and the duties to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. The report concludes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

Further analysis if to follow. In September 2021, Michelle Bachelet, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council that her Office if “finalizing its assessment of the available information on allegations of serious human rights violations in that region, with a view to making it public.” The Uyghur Tribunal, an independent inquiry established to assess the evidence of the alleged atrocities perpetrated against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Uyghur Region of northwest China, is to pronounce its analysis of the situation of Uyghurs on December 9, 2021. As such, more evidence and assessment on the situation of Uyghurs will be published in due course. 

In light of the growing evidence of serious human rights violations in China, some States and parliaments have been calling for urgent action. In January 2021, the U.S. State Department recognized the atrocities as genocide and crimes against humanity. Similarly, Parliamentarians in several countries, including the parliaments of Canada, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belgium, and the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, have made the same determination. In November 2021, U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was reported to have accused China of committing genocide.

China denies any wrongdoing against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

However, the question is now, what is going to be done with all the information and evidence. For example, the U.N. could establish a mechanism akin the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM). The IIIM was established by the U.N. General Assembly to “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses and to prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings, in accordance with international law standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes, in accordance with international law.” As such, the mechanism goes further than only assessing the situation and making recommendation. Indeed, it is the first step to ensure that the actors responsible for the atrocities will be brought to justice in the future. This is a model worthy of replicating for the atrocities in Xinjiang.

There are many other legal and diplomatic options that could be taken but inaction is not one of them.