“Genocide”:
The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. Victims have to be deliberately, not randomly, targeted because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups outlined in the above definition. [Link]
One thing to say is this: I don’t know what’s going on in Xinjiang. And neither does the writer at the Guardian, or the New York Times, or the BBC. None of us knows what’s going on. The boy people who do are those living there, those that have escaped from there and Chinese (ie Han) officials in charge of the province. The rest of us are onlookers and have to muster the best we can in limited info.
On that, on the sat-photos, on the testimony of refugees, it seems pretty certain that there’s severe repression going on in Xinjiang. That native Uygurs, especially the majority Muslims, are being targeted for systemic repression. A “justification” is because the Han Chinese want to squash terrorism. There’s the East Turkmenistan Liberation Front, claiming Xinjiang. It’s not a fantasy and it’s genuinely dangerous. China is not the only nation to use some pretty severe methods to subdue Islamic terrorism.
But still. Is it “genocide”? The “-cide” bit of “genocide” is critical here. It means “killing of”. As in “homicide”, “suicide”, “regicide” and “fratricide”. In all cases it means the killing of. Not the mistreatment of or the repression of. The killing of.
Two things against that: One, the UN Genocide Convention definition is rather more broad than simply “killing” of a whole people. So, China sterilising Uighur women would come under it. Though again, China did this widely during the One Child Policy era, against their own people, the Han, and no-one considered that genocide (indeed, ironically, there were exceptions to the One Child Policy for ethnic minorities, including Uygurs, who were able to have as many children as they wished).
Two: the word itself — “genocide” — is weaponised, just as is “racism”. It’s a very effective spear. Mist look show many people are now talking about it, vs saying that there’s “repression” or Labour camps in Xinjiang. That one word has power in itself. Of course it’s a power that may wane with overuse, just as that’s happened with “racism”.
End of the day, I’d much rather we were careful and accurate in our use of words as powerful and emotional as “genocide”. What’s going in in Xinjiang seems pretty bad. I’m just not convinced it’s “genocide”. One could even argue -- not without some basis --that what’s going on is a forceful form of the Reform of Islam. China makes the Uygurs shave their beards, eat pork and drink alcohol. Yikes! “What have the Chinese ever done for us!”.
ADDED: the very fact that Beijing won’t allow investigations into Xinjiang says a lot.
Also: I’ve been posting against the treatment of Uygurs for a couple of years: click the Uygur Label to see. So it’s not like I’m an apologist for Beijing. Not on this issue, anyway…
