‘A historic day’: Uyghurs welcome genocide ruling and call for action from world leaders

China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, an independent tribunal has ruled. Rory Sullivan speaks to Uyghurs, parliamentarians and academics for their reaction

Workers walk beside the fence of an internment camp in Xinjiang, China, on 4 September, 2018. (Reuters)

The Uyghur diaspora has called on world leaders to take “meaningful action” after an independent tribunal ruled that China is committing genocide in its most northwesterly region.

The verdict comes amid growing pressure on China over the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Muslim ethnic minorities since 2017.

On Thursday, the Uyghur Tribunal - an unofficial body based in London - found the People’s Republic of China (PRC) guilty of genocide due to its birth prevention policies, which the panel argued “intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs” in Xinjiang province.

The nine panellists determined that forced birth control practices such as sterilisation reached the threshold for the crime as set out under part of the second Article of the UN’s Genocide Convention.

Experts have estimated that the targeting of Uyghur women could reduce the ethnic minority population in the south of the province by up to a third over the next two decades.

In a two-hour oral judgment delivered on Thursday morning, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who chaired eight days of hearings in June and September, said the tribunal’s finding had been reached “beyond reasonable doubt” on the basis of witness statements, expert testimony and leaked Chinese government documents.

He clarified that no mass killings have taken place and that it would be amiss to compare the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) actions to those perpetrated by the Nazis in the Second World War.

‘Such comparisons may be well-intentioned but are unhelpful. The evidence of what has happened to the Uyghurs is not the Holocaust,” he said.

However, he added that extermination is not the only factor to consider.

“Genocide in law is more broadly defined than the common conception of mass murder of a specific group,” Sir Geoffrey added.

The tribunal, whose panel comprised of academics, lawyers, doctors, a businessman and an ex-diplomat, came about because of the inability of the international courts to assess allegations of genocide.

“Had any other official body - domestic or international - determined or sought to determine these issues, the tribunal would have been unnecessary,” Sir Geoffrey explained.

As well as upholding the genocide charge, the Uyghur Tribunal decided that the CCP was also committing crimes against humanity as listed under the Rome Statute, including rape, enforced sterilisations and enforced disappearances.

The judgment was welcomed by Uyghur leaders as a step towards ending abuses in Xinjiang. “Today’s verdict is significant for us. It is a historic day for Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other peoples who are suffering because of the Chinese Communist Party,” Dolkun Isa, chair of the World Uyghur Congress (UWC), told The Independent.

Mr Isa said that countries can no longer ignore the evidence examined by the Uyghur Tribunal.

“Now, there can be no excuse for states and the international community to keep silent in the face of the ongoing genocide.”

In his opinion, the atrocities can only be stopped if nations act together to sanction China for its human rights violations and if individuals start to boycott companies linked to Xinjiang. He also said that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must consider the tribunal’s ruling ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics next year.

Lord David Alton, a crossbench peer who was sanctioned by China in March over his remarks on the treatment of the Uyghurs, approves of the UK government’s decision earlier this week to announce a diplomatic boycott of the games. But ministers should go much further, he told me.

“The government is the obstacle and has been throughout,” Lord David said of its refusal to acknowledge the Uyghur Tribunal and its decision not to back legislation requiring British courts to determine substantive genocide allegations against other countries.

If the UK does not take further action, it will continue to breach its obligations to prevent genocide under the 1948 UN convention, Sir David warned. The cabinet should also sanction leading Chinese politicians and companies linked to the atrocities, he added.

Adrian Zenz, an expert on Xinjiang who gave evidence to the tribunal, also believes its verdict is of critical importance. “I think that this really sets a new standard. They took great care with their reasoning,” he said over the phone from the US.

“This is the first time in history that a genocide determination has been made solely based on the criterion of destroying a group in part through births and not the extermination of living members,” the academic added.

“What the tribunal has achieved is a public shaming of governments that have failed to live up to their obligations.”

Nicholas Vetch, a panellist on the tribunal, said he and his colleagues had done their work and that it was now in other people’s hands. “We dealt with evidence and only evidence and applied the law and only the law to the evidence. If anything was exculpatory, we took it into account. We would have preferred if the PRC participated; we invited them on numerous occasions,” he told The Independent.

“It is not a matter for us now. We have done what we said we would do, which is deliver a judgment. It is now for others to take that determination and all the evidence and do with it what they must.”

Asked whether the judgment would make a difference, Mr Vetch’s colleague Sir Geoffrey Nice told me: “The answer is that I don’t know.”

“You have a limited function. You provide a fact. You assume that those with responsibilities would follow on from making that fact clear and will do so,” he said, referring to the role of people’s tribunal.

He also highlighted how the CCP has done good things in other parts of the country. “You absolutely cannot look at a country and say it’s all bad.”

Responding to the verdict on Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in London described the tribunal as “a political tool” exploited “by a few anti-China elements”, while claiming that Xinjiang “now enjoys economic progress, social stability and ethnic solidarity”.

Beijing also struck out at countries like the US and the UK over their diplomat boycott of the Winter Olympics, saying they will “pay a price” for the move.

Returning to Mr Isa, the head of the WUC spoke of the pain inflicted on his people by the Chinese government.

“Over the last four years, I’ve had more and more horrible news,” he said, mentioning how his mother died in an internment camp and how he does not know whether his older brother is alive or dead. “My story is not unique. Many others have similar problems and some have worse than me.”

Camp survivor Tursinay Ziyawdun, who told the tribunal that she was gang-raped multiple times by officials during her detention, was glad to hear the judgment. After it was announced, she called on the world to hold China accountable.

“As a survivor from the Chinese concentration camps, I got very emotional hearing the verdict. Once again, I believe there is still justice in this world,” she said. “There’s no excuse for the world not to act against China’s cruelty.”