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China’s treatment of Uyghurs violates the 1948 Genocide Convention, report says

March 10, 2021 at 2:24 pm

Members of Women Muslim Uyghur minority hold placards and flags demonstrate against China and its treatment of the Uyghur community in China on March 8, 2021 [OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images]

China bears responsibility for breaches of the Genocide Convention in its treatment of Uyghur Muslims, the US-based think tank the Newline Institute for Strategy and Policy has said in a report.

According to the think tank, this report is the first independent expert application of the 1948 Genocide Convention to the ongoing treatment of the Uyghurs in China.

“The People’s Republic of China (China) 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 (Genocide Convention) based on an extensive review of the available evidence and application of international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground,” the report says.

“China’s policies and practices targeting Uyghurs in the region must be viewed in their totality, which amounts to an intent to destroy the Uyghurs as a group, in whole or in substantial part, as such,” it adds.

The report also examines the key pertinent developments in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR – East Turkestan) from May 2013, when the XUAR authorities released the earliest known document laying the groundwork for the mass internment campaign.

China has simultaneously pursued a dual systematic campaign of forcibly sterilising Uyghur women of childbearing age, the report says, and interning Uyghur men of child-bearing years, preventing the regenerative capacity of the group.

Last January, China’s Embassy in the US publicly stated: “In the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated … making them no longer baby-making machines.” However, this statement was later removed by Twitter.

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