Action Over Genocide

Definition: Genocide (UN)

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Does China fit the UNs definition of genocide? This page will explore the Uyghur crisis and how it is a genocide. Take a look at how the Uyghur crisis fits the list in the definition.

1. There has been no concrete evidence that any Uyghurs have been killed, however there's no doubt that some Uyghurs may have been killed from the cruel environment.

2. and 3. Uyghur people live in cruel conditions in these camps. Read the rest of the page to learn more information.

4. Refer to graphs and text below.

5. "Hundreds of thousands of Uyghur children have been forcibly moved to state-run orphanages where they are indoctrinated to renounce their ethnic and religious identities and praise the CCP." (Abbas 2021)

What is happening in China?

Sometime over the past few years, China had started detaining "Uyghurs" and putting them into re-education camps. Since April 2017, over 800,000 Uyghurs had been confirmed to be detained but there is a possibility it could've been over 2 million.(Cosenza 2021) These stats reveal why this crisis is such a big deal. 800,000 is a lot of people as it is, but there possibly could've been more than twice of the Muslims being detained in China. Today, five years later, it is possible that the number of detainees has reached over that amount of 2 million, considering no action has been done. However, that is not the only factor changing in this crisis.

This crisis is only getting worse by time. In 2017, it was only confirmed that the Uyghurs were being detained. Now, however, it is much worse for them. For example, according to an article in 2021 by Jackie Salo on the nypost.com, "Chinese authorities subjected Uyghur Muslim detainees to being hanged from cell ceilings, tortured with electric batons and gang-raped by fellow prisoners, a former detective claimed in a bombshell interview." (Salo 2021) This article really gives us a true understanding of what the environment is like in these camps. The horrific environment shows us that these aren't "re-education" camps, but they are cruel prisons. These prisons must be removed as soon as possible because considering the amount of detainees and minuscule amount of information about what is going on within the camps, who knows what else is happening and what is to come.

These articles descriptions of these camps in China resemble the concentration camps of the Holocaust, the worst genocide known to man. The resemblance in the amount of detainees, environment, torturing, and other factors of the genocide brings us to the question, "Could this crisis in China be a genocide?"

Is the crisis happening in China a genocide?

Michael E O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institute had published an article in 2021 which stated that China had been over demonized and the Uyghur crisis shouldn't be considered a genocide. For example, "But genocide historically has described the killings of hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals. Nothing close to that has occurred against the Uyghurs. Moreover, for all of China’s forced-assimilation and demographic-dilution efforts in Xinjiang, there is no compelling evidence of a plan to “destroy” the group, so Chinese behavior does not meet the definition of genocide based on the concept of intent as noted in Article II." (O'Hanlon 2021)

O'Hanlon may be right about some things, such as the fact that there hasn't been mass-killings so far as past genocides were described. However, his argument is flawed in many more ways. While he is using the descriptions of past genocides to support his claim, he frays from the global definition of genocide given by the United Nations stated above. The definition doesn't say anything about genocides having to have mass-killings. The definition is more centered on the intent to destroy a certain group (in any way), which brings me to O'Hanlons next point.

O'Hanlon believes that there is no evidence that China wants to destroy the Uyghurs, when in reality, there are many. Take for example the graphs below. As you can see, around the past years the sterilization rates had skyrocketed and birth rates plummeted in Xinjiang, home to most Uyghur Muslims in China. This means that the Uyghurs have obviously been victim to these sterilizations, so they cannot reproduce. These graphs show the intent of destruction that China has against the Uyghurs because it shows they have been trying to destroy them through not allowing them to continue to produce more Uyghurs.

To help you understand more about the genocide, Heres a slideshow below to guide you through the Uyghur genocide through the sequence of the Ten Stages of Genocide below.

TEN STAGES OF GENOCIDE Uyghur

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