By Horatio Glover’26
Section 1091 of Title 18, a legal code developed by the US Department of Justice, prohibits genocide whether committed in time of peace or time of war. Genocide is defined in § 1091 and includes violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. There is federal jurisdiction if the offense is committed within the United States. There is also Federal extraterritorial jurisdiction when the offender is a national of the United States. This means that the US has given itself the power to intervene when genocide is happening anywhere in the world.
The Uyghur Muslims are a Turkic-speaking people who live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang in China. Their way of life has been attacked due to them pretty separated from China. The Chinese government has been cracking down on the Xinjiang region since 2016 due to terrorist attacks happening. Due to this, the Chinese government has been taking Uyghurs and other Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks, and putting them into detention camps. With this, they have also been illegally detained; most people who go inside the camps weren’t actually charged for anything. The only crime people have committed is being Muslim, which at that point is Islamophobia. The Uyghurs have also been labeled as extremists due to them practicing their religion.
Since 2017, one million Uyghur and other ethnic Muslims have been ‘’subjected to intense surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations, among other rights. Abuses’’ (Citation). China calls these camps “reeducation camps,” which are supposed ‘’to teach Mandarin, Chinese laws, and vocational skills, and to prevent citizens from becoming influenced by extremist ideas’’(Maizland, Lindsay). Women in the camps have also reported stories on rape and sexual abuse, too. From April 2017 and August 2018, the camps have also almost tripled their size up to 140 soccer fields.
From outside the camps, Uyghur Muslims have been under intensive surveillance to the point that it’s alarming. China is known for having a very advanced digital landscape with thousands of cameras and data on its citizens; however, in Xinjiang it has been taken to a whole new level. The government has employed mini police stations that they call “convenience police stations.” They help divide and keep the population under control and under heavy surveillance. The mass surveillance Chinese authorities has employed also include ‘’networks of automated sensory systems throughout the region, which include CCTV cameras with facial recognition, automated license plate recognition, and infrared capabilities; wifi sniffers that collect identifying addresses of networked devices; and security checkpoints and visitors’ management systems that gather identifying information’’ (“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”).
If you think that’s bad, it gets worse. ‘’Kitchen knives in Xinjiang are tracked by QR codes that include the owner’s ID number, photo, ethnicity, and address, and vehicles are subject to mandatory location trackers’’ (“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”). Furthermore, the Turkic Muslims have been under extensive surveillance including biometric tracking like recording facial recognition, fingerprints, and voice samples. All this becomes part of their digital profile under the “Physicals for All” act, which is designed to make it easier for them to be tracked and surveilled.
Even with all this evidence from multiple sources, the Chinese government still denies allegations of genocide and hasn’t been found guilty of genocide because it ‘’continues to use its vast influence to manipulate U.N. processes and to ensure that its allies avoid public acknowledgement of the persecution of the Uyghurs’’ (Don’t Look Away from China’s Atrocities Against the Uyghurs.)
Two dozen governments send a letter to the Human Rights Council president urging “meaningful access” for the UN high commissioner for human rights to Xinjiang. However, it got denied by 50 other countries including Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other states with poor human rights records. To add more emphasis on the topic ’The tribunal, which ruled that it did not consider the crimes of mass killing or enslavement as proven, made no recommendations as it has no power to sanction China or its officials’’(China guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, watchdog finds).
While all this evidence shows is that even though there isn’t mass killings to be called a genocide, China’s actions are crimes against humanity and violating basic human rights. According to United for Human Rights, the rights that are being violated include “Don’t Discriminate,” “The Right to Life,” “No Slavery,” “No Torture,” and “No Unfair Detainment,” all of which China is violating.
Based on the evidence, the Chinese government has and still is violating human rights within its borders against the Uyghurs Muslims and other ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks. While it’s not certain if it can be filed under the clause of genocide, most of the international community has agreed that China has crossed line into into genocide. Because of the US’s leadership in the world, the US should take action against China.
Works Cited
Baillie, Lauren, and Matthew Parkes. “Don’t Look Away from China’s Atrocities Against the Uyghurs.” United States Institute of Peace, USIP, 6 April 2023, https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/04/dont-look-away-chinas-atrocities-against-uyghurs. Accessed 8 May 2024.
BBC. “Who are the Uyghurs and why is China being accused of genocide?” BBC, 24 May 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037. Accessed 8 May 2024.
Gunter, Joel. “China committed genocide against Uyghurs, independent tribunal rules.” BBC, BBC, 9 December 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59595952. Accessed 7 May 2024.
Human Rights Watch. ““Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”: China’s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims | HRW.” Human Rights Watch, HRW, 19 April 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting. Accessed 7 May 2024.
Maizland, Lindsay. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” Council on Foreign Relations, 22 September 2022, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights. Accessed 8 May 2024.
Simmons, Keir, et al. “China guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, watchdog finds.” NBC News, NBC, 9 December 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/china-guilty-genocide-crimes-humanity-uyghurs-watchdog-finds-rcna8157. Accessed 8 May 2024.
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