Persecution of Uyghurs in China
The Chinese government is committing a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as persecution or 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.[2] It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.[3][4] 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.
"Xinjiang genocide" redirects here. For the 1750s genocide that also occurred in Xinjiang, see Dzungar genocide.Persecution of Uyghurs in China
Xinjiang, China
2014–present
Internment, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced birth control, forced labor, torture, brainwashing, alleged rape (including gang rape)
est. ≥1 million detained
Government of the People's Republic of China
Counterterrorism (official)
Sinicization, Islamophobia,[1] and suppression of political dissent
In addition to the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in state-sponsored camps, government policies have included forced labor,[5][6] suppression of Uyghur religious practices,[7] political indoctrination,[8] forced sterilization,[9] forced contraception,[10][11] and forced abortion.[12][13] Experts estimate that, since 2017, some sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged,[2] and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.[14][15] Chinese government statistics reported that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%.[9] In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%.[16] Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide.[17] Birth rates in Xinjiang fell a further 24% in 2019, compared to a nationwide decrease of 4.2%.[9]
These actions have been described as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, or as an ethnocide or cultural genocide,[18][19] or as genocide. Those accusing China of genocide point to intentional acts committed by the Chinese government that they say run afoul of Article II of the Genocide Convention,[20][21][22] which prohibits "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part," a "racial or religious group" including "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and "measures intended to prevent births within the group".[23]
The Chinese government denies having committed human rights abuses in Xinjiang.[3][24] In an assessment by the UN Human Rights Office, the United Nations (UN) stated that China's policies and actions in the Xinjiang region may be crimes against humanity, although it did not use the term genocide.[25][26] International reactions have varied. In 2020, 39 UN member states issued statements to the United Nations Human Rights Council criticizing China's policies, while 45 countries supported China's "deradicalization measures in Xinjiang" and opposed "the politicization of human rights issues and double standards".[27] In December 2020, a case brought to the International Criminal Court was dismissed because the crimes alleged appeared to have been "committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute", meaning the ICC could not investigate them.[28][29] The United States has declared the human rights abuses a genocide, announcing its finding on January 19, 2021, though the United States Department of State found that there is insufficient evidence to support that characterization.[30][31] Legislatures in several countries have since passed non-binding motions describing China's actions as genocide, including the House of Commons of Canada,[32] the Dutch parliament,[33] the House of Commons of the United Kingdom,[34] the Seimas of Lithuania,[35] and the French National Assembly.[36] Other parliaments, such as those in New Zealand,[37] Belgium,[38] and the Czech Republic condemned the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs as "severe human rights abuses" or crimes against humanity.[39]
Denial of abuses
The abuses against the Uyghurs and related ethnic groups have been denied by the Chinese government. These denials have been both internal and external.[556] The Chinese government has conducted propaganda campaigns on social media to further denial of the abuses. In 2021, the Chinese government posted thousands of videos to social media showing residents of Xinjiang denying claims of abuse made by Mike Pompeo; a joint investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times found the videos were part of an influence campaign coordinated by the CCP's Central Propaganda Department.[116] They have also used their existing disinformation networks, including social media trolls, to deny genocide and other human rights abuses against Uyghurs.[557]
In 2020, during an interview with Andrew Marr of the BBC, the Chinese ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming denied any abuse against Uyghurs despite being shown drone footage of what appeared to be shackled Uyghur, and other minority ethnic, prisoners being herded on to trains during a prison transfer. The ambassador also blamed reports of forced sterilisations on "some small group of anti-China elements".[558] In January 2021, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded to questions about the Uyghur genocide during a press briefing by stating, "China has no genocide; China has no genocide; China has no genocide, period."[559][560] In February 2021, Wang Wenbin called the Uyghur genocide the "lie of the century".[561][562]
The abuses, and the existence of the camp network, have also been denied by a small minority of American left-wing media outlets. These include a left-wing blog called LA Progressive which began publishing denial articles in April 2020, while The Grayzone has been the most influential outlet to publish articles denying "China's ongoing repression of the Uyghur people".[563] The Grayzone has been featured by Chinese state media, including CGTN and the Global Times. In 2020, Chinese government spokesperson Hua Chunying retweeted a story published by The Grayzone which claimed to have debunked research into the internment camps in Xinjiang.[564]
In February 2021, a Press Gazette investigation found that Facebook had accepted content from Chinese state media outlets such as China Daily and China Global Television Network that denied the mistreatment of Uyghurs.[565]
According to anthropologist and China expert Gerald Roche, writing in The Nation, Xinjiang denialism only aids Chinese and American imperialism.[566] He cited Donald Trump, who, according to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, believed that building internment camps was "exactly the right thing to do."[567]
According to reports by the Newlines Institute, a think tank at the Fairfax University of America, AmaBhungane, and The New York Times, Neville Roy Singham funds a network of nonprofits and groups, including Code Pink, that deny or downplay human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.[568][569][570]
In Taiwan, former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu received criticism for claiming that Western nations had "fabricated lies about the so-called ‘forced labor’ and ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang to undermine China’s internal unity” while on a Chinese government-sponsored trip to Xinjiang in 2022.[571]