2024 RT Amination Banner.gif

China Daily

HongKong> Opinion> Content
Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 11:40
Genocide in Xinjiang? Here are the facts
By Lee Hoey Simon and Rafa Yao Sihao
Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 11:40 By Lee Hoey Simon and Rafa Yao Sihao

The term “genocide” has become a matter of public concern following accusations of China’s Xinjiang policy by the United States and some Western powers. So what does genocide mean according to international public law? 

Definition of genocide under international public law

The term “genocide” was first proposed by Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944. At the end of 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed Resolution 260A “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. The treaty became effective in January 1951. Article 2 of the legal document clearly defines the acts of genocide. It states that any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (1) Killing members of the group; (2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide cases in human history

For a long time since its founding, the United States was responsible for ruthlessly expelling and killing Native Americans during the westward movement of settlers. The US has also caused tens of thousands of innocent casualties in many anti-terrorism wars against Muslim countries, including Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. The US is also one of the few nations to have launched germ warfare. 

Even today, black Americans continue to suffer widespread racial discrimination and human rights abuses. George Floyd, an African American, was suffocated to death when a police officer was kneeling on him during his arrest in 2020. Less than three months later, another black American, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police and seriously wounded. Such things happen frequently.

In Australia, the so-called White Australia policy resulted in the mass slaughter of indigenous people and the forcible removal of an estimated 100,000 indigenous children from their families. Australia is still sending troops to Afghanistan in the name of anti-terrorism measures, and an official Australian Defense Force report in 2020 found “credible evidence” that Australian elite forces unlawfully killed 39 people in the war.

In the 1870s, the Canadian government put the assimilation of indigenous peoples on its official agenda, whose purpose was to eliminate Indian ancestry from the children of aboriginals, by setting up technical schools and implementing a cultural extermination policy. Forcibly taken away from their families, more than 150,000 aboriginal school-age children were made to convert to Christianity and learn English. As many as 6,000 children died in residential institutions, which operated from 1876 to 1996, though the real figure is likely to be significantly higher as the government stopped recording aboriginal students’ deaths in 1920 in light of the alarming statistics. Moreover, the crimes committed by the Canadian government against the indigenous people also include depriving the indigenous people of their land, assimilating their language and traditional culture.

During World War I, the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians victims, an incident the United Nations classified as genocide in 1978. During World War II, Nazi Germany massacred an estimated 6 million Jews. More recently, during a two-month period in 1994, Hutu government forces in the East African nation of Rwanda killed about 800,000 to 1 million of the minority Tutsi group as well as political opponents irrespective of their ethnic origin.

What about Xinjiang?

The Uyghur population in Xinjiang has grown substantially in the past 40 years. In the seventh census conducted in 2020, it reached more than 12 million (when China conducted the first census in 1953, the total population in Xinjiang was only 4 million). Life expectancy also increased from 30 to 72 years. Children aged 0-9 account for about 18 percent of the population. From 2010 to 2018, the Uyghur population rose more than 25 percent. 

Can there be genocide with such a rapidly increasing population? Uyghur culture and scenic spots are the main attractions for 200 million tourists to visit Xinjiang every year. This shows the stability and openness of Xinjiang. Uyghurs participate in all aspects of Chinese society, such as CCTV host Nigmaiti, film and television star Dilraba and Gulinazha, singer Nawkre, basketball player Xirelijiang.

However, due to poor living conditions and cultural habits, the Uyghur population has a relatively low level of education. According to the 2019 census, only about 40 percent received a primary school education and about 40 percent received a middle school education. This explains why the government must increase investment in Uyghur education. Bilingual schools have been setting up in Xinjiang. Uyghur students have six hours of Uyghur language class every week to learn more about their culture and increase the diversity of Chinese civilization. Students also learn Putonghua in order to access richer education resources and improve their knowledge.

If such facts and situations are inexplicably regarded as genocide, it is a lie with immoral political intentions.

The accusation of genocide against China stems from the great power struggle between China and the US. In order to suppress China, the US is attacking China with flimsy accusations of its education policy. They accuse the government of teaching various subjects in Chinese, but fail to consider that Uyghurs do not have enough textbooks and teaching resources for students, which hampers the development of minority youth. Just like CNN’s Connect the World program on Feb 11, 2021, which discussed human rights issues in Xinjiang but mistook Xinjiang town in Wengyuan county, Shaoguan city, Guangdong province for Xinjiang, the lack of basic knowledge and common sense twists the facts.

The “genocide” that has led to Uyghurs’ rapid population growth has never been seen before in human history! What the US and some Western powers have done is a pure crime of genocide. The lies by these Western politicians and media that aim to smear China for the purpose of political suppression are more disgusting than genocide itself.

Lee Hoey Simon is vice-president of the Hong Kong Association of Overseas-Returned Scholars, and Rafa Yao Sihao is a research assistant with the Basic Law Foundation.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.


Share this story

CHINA DAILY
HONG KONG NEWS
OPEN
Please click in the upper right corner to open it in your browser !