The US has formally decided that China is performing genocide and atrocities against humanity on Uyghur Muslims and ethnic and religious minority groups who exist in the northwestern area of Xinjiang. Since at least March 2017, local officials dramatically increased their decades-long battle of oppression on Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, including ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz.
The US State Department has earlier calculated that over two million Uyghurs, as well as members of other Muslim minority organizations, have been arrested in a sprawling web of internment camps in the area. Former reeducation camp detainees have that they felt political education and insult inside the camps, such as food and sleep loss and forced vaccinations. Some Uyghur women were compelled to use birth control and experience sterilization as part of a planned effort to shift down birth rates among minorities in Xinjiang.
China rejects accusations of such human rights insults in Xinjiang. It has declared that its reeducation camps are important for limiting religious extremism and terrorism in the region, which is residence to about 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority that speak a language almost linked to Turkish and have their own separate culture. Chinese state-controlled media have also particularly discussed administering the term “genocide” to the condition. At a press conference Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denounced Pompeo for extending “poison” with his genocide claim.
The State Department’s declaration won’t automatically trigger immediate penalties, but Peter Irwin, senior program officer at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said it would have a powerful symbolic impact, both in the US and internationally.” Determinations like these are only significant as they’re backed by real, sustained pressure,” he said. “The worst thing that the US government can do, especially when we’re in the midst of a transition of power, is to become self-satisfied with this powerful rhetorical statement about the crisis without following it up.”A Washington-based advocacy group, Campaign for Uyghurs, welcomed the designation as a step toward justice.
“My own sister’s 20-year prison sentence on false charges is clearly linked to this genocidal intent by the Chinese regime. She, and all Uyghurs, deserve justice,” she added. Darren Byler, a Xinjiang expert and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Colorado said he expected the decision would establish Uyghur claims for asylum in the US as well as raise pressure to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. “But I don’t know what it will mean for Uyghurs in China,” he said. Anxiety over human rights concerns in Xinjiang is a bipartisan problem in the US. Nevertheless, the announcement in the last hours of the Trump presidency could considerably hinder the incoming Biden administration’s access to and dealings with Beijing.
In a statement to Politico in August, his spokesperson Andrew Bates named China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide. On Tuesday, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he also accepted the designation. In his announcement, Pompeo also stated he had “directed the US Department of State to extend to review and gather important information about the continuing crimes happening in Xinjiang and to make this proof open to relevant officials and the international community to the extent permissible by law. The treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang has been broadly denounced by international society. In July 2019, twenty-two countries including Japan and the UK signed a letter asking China to stop its “mass arbitrary arrests and similar violations” and declared on Beijing to provide UN authorities to enter the region.
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In December, the European Parliament adopted a declaration denouncing China over the compelled labor charges. The British government has also blamed Beijing and stated earlier this month that it would fine companies which cover links to Xinjiang. The new measures are intended to guarantee that all British organizations “are not complicit in, nor profiting from, the human rights violations in Xinjiang,” according to the UK Foreign reports. Earlier, the US also forbade imports of cotton products and tomatoes manufactured in Xinjiang over forced labor matters.
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