On March 30, 2021, U.S. State Department published the 2020 Human Rights Report confirming its determination of the atrocities against the Uyghurs as genocide and crimes against humanity and providing further details concerning their findings.
The 2020 Human Rights Report provides a long list of human rights violations in China, including several specifically referring to the treatment of the Uyghurs:
“arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; arbitrary detention by the government, including the mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only “re-education” training; (...) arbitrary interference with privacy; pervasive and intrusive technical surveillance and monitoring; serious restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members, and censorship and site blocking; (...) severe restrictions and suppression of religious freedom; substantial restrictions on freedom of movement; (...) forced sterilization and coerced abortions; forced labor and trafficking in persons.”
On March 31, 2021, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying rejected these allegations providing counter-arguments. The statement gets it right that the determination of genocide should not be taken lightly. However, it erroneously concludes that: “No State, organization, or individual is qualified and entitled to arbitrarily determine that another country has committed genocide. In international relations, no country should use this accusation as a political label for rumor-mongering and malicious manipulation.” Indeed, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro clarified, the duty to prevent: “Arise[s] at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.” As such, States must conduct their monitoring, analysis and determination of at least the serious risk of genocide in order to engage their duties. This ultimately means that States need to engage with considerations surrounding the legal elements of genocide and/or risk factors. Indeed, some States conduct such an analysis and make the relevant determinations to inform their responses. This is to give effect to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Source: Forbes
BDST: 2035 HRS, APR 04, 2021
SMS
