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The Uyghur Tribunal was an independent "people's tribunal" based in the United Kingdom aiming to examine evidence regarding the ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people by the Government of China and to evaluate whether the abuses constitute genocide under the Genocide Convention. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] The tribunal was chaired by Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, who announced the creation of the tribunal in September 2020. [1] [2] [6]
According to Nice, the tribunal was called when there became "no other way of bringing the leadership of the [Chinese] Communist Party collectively or individually to judgement." [4] China's government has said that the tribunal constitutes "blasphemy against the law", issued sanctions against the tribunal and its organizers, and called the tribunal "sheer fiction". [3] [7] [8] [9]
In December 2021, the tribunal concluded that the government of the People's Republic of China had committed genocide against the Uyghurs via birth control and sterilization measures. [10] [5] [11] [12] In addition to this, they found evidence of crimes against humanity, torture and sexual abuse. [10] The tribunal's final determination did not individually bind any government to take action, but organizers hoped that the tribunal's hearings and reports may spur international action and help to hold China to account for its abuse of the Uyghurs. [5] [12] [13] [14] [15]
The government of China has committed an ongoing series of human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in and around the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People's Republic of China that is often characterized as genocide. [16] [17] [18] Since 2014, [19] the Chinese government, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies leading to more than one million Muslims [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] (the majority of them Uyghurs) being held in secretive internment camps without any legal process [25] [26] in what has become the largest-scale and most systematic detention of ethnic and religious minorities since the Holocaust and World War II. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] Thousands of mosques have been destroyed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools. [32] [33] [34]
In particular, critics of the Chinese government's policies have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, [35] [36] suppression of Uyghur religious practices, [37] [38] political indoctrination, [39] severe ill-treatment, [40] as well as extensive evidence [41] [42] [43] and other testimonials detailing human rights abuses including forced sterilization, contraception, [44] [45] and abortions. [46] [47] [48] [49] Critics have described these as constituting the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, as well as an ethnocide or cultural genocide. [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] Some governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile have called it a genocide. [18] [56] [57] [58] [59]
International reactions have been sharply divided, with dozens of United Nations (UN) member states issuing opposing letters to the United Nations Human Rights Council in support and condemnation of China's policies in Xinjiang in 2020. [60] [61] In December 2020, the International Criminal Court declined to take investigative action against China on the basis of not having jurisdiction over China for most of the alleged crimes. [62] [63] The United States, Canada's House of Commons, the Dutch parliament, the United Kingdom's House of Commons, the Seimas of Lithuania, and Senate of the Czech Republic have recognized the treatment of Uyghurs in China as genocide. [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69]
Geoffrey Nice, the prosecutor in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milošević, launched the Uyghur tribunal in September 2020. [2] The tribunal was set up in response to a June 2020 request from the World Uyghur Congress, which provided the initial evidence to the tribunal. [4] [5] [70] [71] A call for evidence was put out at the time of the tribunal's announcement. [2] [4]
By February 2020 the tribunal's jury had been finalized; [1] the tribunal's jury is composed of human rights experts and lawyers. [5] [11]
One dozen experts have been invited to the hearings to present evidence, including academics such as anthropologist Darren Byler, Chinese Studies professor Joanne Smith Finley, researcher Nathan Ruser, and researcher Adrian Zenz. [6] [71] [72] Others who will present evidence include World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa, Uyghur scholar Adbuweli Ayup, and witnesses to the Xinjiang internment camps that include former detainees. [3] [6] [14] [71]
Organizers of the Uyghur Tribunal say that China was invited to present evidence, though the Chinese government has not done so. [5] [11] [70]
The Uyghur Tribunal began its first series of hearings in June 2021, with a second set of hearings scheduled for September 2021. [5] [11] [72]
During hearings held in June 2021, witness testimonies described observing or experiencing mass torture, rape (including gang rape), forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced administration of medications that stopped women from menstruating, arbitrary arrest and detention, mass surveillance, intimidation by government officials, and forced child separation, [3] [5] [13] [14] [15] [70] [73] and allegations of Infanticide. [74] Evidence presented also included testimony of sexual harassment of women by Chinese agents, retaliation by the Chinese government against relatives of Uyghurs living abroad, the physical destruction of homes with families that "had more births than allowed", and other abuses. [13] [70] [73]
China denies that it has committed human rights abuses within Xinjiang, including within the Xinjiang internment camps, and disputes the legitimacy of the testimonies. [5] [9]
The Uyghur Tribunal held a virtual third hearing on 27 November 2021.
According to the tribunal's website, the finding of genocide "would constitute the commission of Genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Convention of 1948 to which the PRC is a signatory and ratifying state. Acts arising from or incidental to the prohibited acts of Genocide, may also in themselves constitute crimes against humanity." [75]
On 9 December 2021, the tribunal concluded that the government of the People's Republic of China had committed genocide against the Uyghurs via birth control and sterilization measures. [10] Additionally, they found evidence of crimes against humanity, torture and sexual abuse. [10]
Australia offered to provide the Uyghur Tribunal with relevant evidence, according to the Tribunal's counsel. [5]
The Chinese government launched an aggressive public relations campaign against the Uyghur Tribunal. [5] [14] [70] [72] [76] The government issued sanctions against the tribunal and its organizers, while its spokesmen have said that the tribunal is "blasphemy against the law" and "sheer fiction" [3] [7] [8] [9] [77] with paid actors. [78] The sanctions were condemned by the British Prime Minister and led the British Foreign Secretary to summon the Chinese ambassador. [79] [80]
According to the tribunal's representatives, China was invited to present evidence, but has not done so. [5] [11] [70]
UK Asia Minister Nigel Adams declined to formally provide government evidence to the Uyghur Tribunal, but met with the chair of the tribunal in April 2021. [81]
The United States offered to provide the Uyghur Tribunal with relevant evidence, according to the tribunal's counsel. [5]
Luke de Pulford, the co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response, wrote in ITV News that the tribunal was of "global significance." He wrote that, in the absence of the ability of an international court to analyze the case owing to China's veto power on the United Nations Security Council, that the tribunal would serve "to ensure the Genocide Convention does not become a meaningless document." [82]
Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, told Radio Free Asia after the first day of hearings that "[t]he Uyghur Tribunal hearing has gone extremely well today in spite of China's disinformation campaign and diplomatic threats against tribunal, camp survivors and witnesses." [14]
The Uyghurs, alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the titular nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government as a regional minority and the titular people of Xinjiang.
Nury Ablikim Turkel is an American attorney, public official and human rights advocate based in Washington, D.C. He is currently Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Racism in China arises from Chinese history, nationalism, sinicization, and other factors. Racism in modern China has been documented in numerous situations. Ethnic tensions have led to numerous incidents in the country such as the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing internment and state persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, the 2010 Tibetan language protest, the 2020 Inner Mongolia protests, discrimination against Africans in particular and discrimination against Black people in general.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an ongoing ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
The East Turkistan National Movement also known as the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement is a non-profit human rights and political advocacy organization established in June 2017 in Washington D.C. Salih Hudayar, a Uyghur American consultant and graduate student founded the group after pre-existing Uyghur organizations failed to openly call for East Turkestan independence deeming it "controversial".
The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of China, are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014. The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment, rape, and torture, with some of them alleging genocide. Some 40 countries around the world have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, including countries such as Canada, Germany, Turkey, Honduras and Japan. The governments of more than 35 countries have expressed support for China's government. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs".
The Xinjiang papers are a collection of more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents describing the government policy regarding Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. In November 2019, journalists Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley at The New York Times broke the story that characterized the documents as "one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China's ruling Communist Party in decades." According to The New York Times, the documents were leaked by a source inside the Chinese Communist Party and include a breakdown of how China created and organized the Xinjiang internment camps.
The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo. It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The Chinese government began to wind down the camps in 2019. Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the formal penal system.
The China Cables are a collection of secret Chinese government documents from 2017 which were leaked by exiled Uyghurs to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and published on 24 November 2019. The documents include a telegram which details the first known operations manual for running the Xinjiang internment camps, and bulletins which illustrate how China's centralized data collection system and mass surveillance tool, known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, uses artificial intelligence to identify people for interrogation and potential detention.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 is a United States federal law that requires various federal U.S. government bodies to report on human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, including internment in the Xinjiang re-education camps.
Adrian Nikolaus Zenz is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps and Uyghur genocide. He is a director and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist think tank established by the US government and based in Washington, DC.
Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur American activist and advocate from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. She is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas became one of the most prominent Uyghur voices in international activism following her sister's detainment by the Chinese government in 2018.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is a United States federal law that would change U.S. policy on China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with the goal of ensuring that American entities are not funding forced labor among ethnic minorities in the region.
Salih Hudayar is a Uyghur American politician known for advocating for East Turkistan independence. He founded the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement and has since been leading the movement calling for the "restoration of East Turkistan's independence."
The East Turkistan Government in Exile, also known as the Government in Exile of the Republic of East Turkistan, is a parliamentary-based exile government established and headquartered in Washington, D.C. by Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other peoples from East Turkistan (Xinjiang). The ETGE claims to be the sole legitimate organization representing East Turkistan and its people on the international stage.
Campaign for Uyghurs is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization. The organization operates to advocate for the democratic rights and freedoms of the Uyghur people, both in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and around the world.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a research-based advocacy organization located in Washington, D.C. that promotes human rights for Uyghurs. According to the UHRP, its main goal is "promoting human rights and democracy for Uyghurs and others living in East Turkistan" through research-based advocacy.
Rayhan Asat is a Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate. Since 2020, she has led a public campaign for the release of her brother, Ekpar Asat, who has been held in the Xinjiang internment camp system since 2016, and on behalf of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China. In 2021, she joined the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council as a Nonresident Senior Fellow and became a Yale World Fellow. Asat is also a Senior Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and President of the American Turkic International Lawyers Association.
The OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China is a report published on 31 August 2022 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning the treatment of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups in China. The report concluded that "[t]he extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." Human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet released the report shortly before leaving the office.
...[O]pposition to China's Uyghur genocide is gaining momentum in Norway, where some politicians are fearful of jeopardizing ties with Beijing.
It appears to be the largest imprisonment of people on the basis of religion since the Holocaust.
It is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.
China has established a sprawling system to detain and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities, in what is already the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.
A substantial majority of MPs — including most Liberals who participated — voted in favour of a Conservative motion that says China's actions in its western Xinjiang region meet the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. ... The final tally was 266 in favour and zero opposed. Two MPs formally abstained.