Thursday marked the United Nations' International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. On that very same day, the independent Uyghur Tribunal issued its findings concluding that China has committed genocide, crimes against humanity and torture against Uyghur, Kazakh and other ethnic minority citizens in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
The tribunal of human rights experts and international legal scholars was launched on Sept. 3, 2020 and documented the alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities who reside in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
According to Forbes, several news outlets had already been reporting on the human rights abuses of Chinese authoritiies against Uyghur Muslims in the People's Republic of China (PRC), who were subjected to violence, slavery, forced sterilization, forced abortions, rape, and sexual violence. After the Uyghur Tribunal was formed, the World Uyghur Congress requested for an independent review of such allegations of international crimes against religious minorities in China. The report called the group's findings as "damning."
"Torture of Uyghurs attributable to the PRC is established beyond reasonable doubt," the Uyghur Tribunal's report concluded. "Crimes against humanity attributable to the PRC is established beyond reasonable doubt by acts of: deportation or forcible transfer; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty; torture; rape and other sexual violence; enforced sterilization; persecution; enforced disappearance; and other inhumane acts."
In addition, the Uyghur Tribunal ruled that it is "satisfied beyond reasonable doubt" that China's imposition of measures that prevent births intended to limit and "destroy" the Uyghur population is tantamount to committing genocide.
Breitbart reported that the Uyghur Tribunal's report comes at a critical time, just ahead of China's hosting the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been inundated with calls to postpone or relocate the 2022 Winter Games, most of which they have ignored. The IOC has also routinely defended China against allegations of its other human rights abuses, such as the mysterious disappearance of tennis champion Peng Shuai in November after she publicly accused the former head of China's Olympic Committee Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault.
As per the United Nations, genocide is defined by acts that are committed specifically with an intent to "destroy...a national, ethical, racial, or religious group." This includes actions that prevent births within the group and transferring children to another group, all of which the Uyghur Tribunal found China guilty of.
The Uyghur Tribunal's judgement recounted how pregnant women in China's "detention centers" were forced to undergo abortions even in late stages of pregnancy, with surviving infants being killed off. Women were also subjected to forced removal of their wombs or sterilization through IUDs that were only removable through surgery.
The Uyghur Tribunal observed however, that there is "no evidence of organised mass killings" as the detainees were eventually "allowed back into society" for a short period of time, only "to be detained again." Nonetheless, they passed on a judgement of guilty of genocide for its mass extermination of Uyghur infants, given that the legal definition of genocide indicates preventing births as a "necessary and sufficient element of the crime."
