A US think-tank has accused the Chinese government of committing genocide against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.
It said it has found “clear and convincing proof” that Beijing violated “each and every act” banned by the United Nations convention against genocide, Aljazeera reports.
In its report on Tuesday, the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy said Chinese President Xi Jinping set in motion the effort to destroy Uighurs as a group when he launched the “People’s War on Terror” in Xinjiang in 2014.
Chinese officials followed up with a campaign of mass internment, killings of Uighur leaders, forcible sterilizations, separating children from their families, and destroying the Turkic Muslim group’s identity, including by demolishing mosques and other sacred sites.
The US government, the Canadian and Dutch parliaments have already labelled China’s treatment of the Uighurs genocide, while Washington has also imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials over the rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Beijing, however, rejects the genocide charge, claiming the internment camps are vocational training centres aimed at fighting “extremism”.
The report said there were credible reports of mass deaths under the mass internment drive, while Uighur leaders were selectively sentenced to death or sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
The report said in 2019 alone, the Chinese “government planned to subject at least 80 percent of women of childbearing age in [Xinjiang] to sterilizations or IUD placements.”
It added that the mass-birth prevention strategy meant that the population growth rates in the two largest Uighur prefectures decreased by 84 percent between 2015 and 2018.
Newlines said its report was the first independent analysis of China’s treatment of the Uighurs under the 1948 Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It involved the contributions of more than 30 experts, who examined all available evidence that could be collected and verified, including Chinese government communications, witness testimony and analysis of satellite imagery.
