`SYSTEMIC EVIL' IN CHINA
It's time to act, report says
China is violating the UN genocide convention with a program of imprisonment and forced sterilization of the Uyghur people, says a new report from a leading human rights group. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy details the ongoing genocide in the Xinjiang region of China in the report released Tuesday. The report specifically compares the Chinese government's actions to the United Nations definition of genocide laid out in the 1948 convention and concludes China is clearly committing a genocide.
“We demonstrate conclusively that the policies, the law, the practices, and the campaigns in the region amounts to genocide exactly as laid out in the Genocide Convention,” said Yonah Diamond, the Wallenberg Centre's legal counsel.
The UN convention was created in 1948 in response to the horrors of the Holocaust and specifically defines genocide, while also making it clear that countries have a responsibility to act if it is happening in another nation. The treaty has been signed by 152 countries, including both Canada and China.
“It puts the onus on governments, the 151 other state parties to the Genocide Convention, who have obligations under the treaty,” said Diamond. “The question is will they have the courage to now act in the face of what is undoubtedly a systemic evil and a genocide?”
He said the international community can no longer continue to wait for action on this front. The Wallenberg Centre called for Magnitsky Act sanctions against those involved in the campaign, trade sanctions against China, bans on goods from the Xinjiang region which may have been produced by forced labour and for the relocation of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The convention makes it clear that attempts to destroy a group of people does not have to come with mass executions, but can be a systemic effort to destroy a race of people through efforts like sterilization.
China has consistently denied any accusation that a genocide is taking place in the area, despite growing volumes of evidence, and has suggested the mass internment centres in the country are simply training and re-education facilities.
China's ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, told Canadian journalists just last week that the suggestion his government was pursuing a genocide were the “lies of the century.”
Parliament voted last month on a Conservative motion labelling the Chinese actions as a genocide and it received unanimous support, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet abstained or failed to attend the vote.
The Wallenberg Centre's report found that among many indications the Chinese government is pursuing a genocide is a deliberate effort to ensure Uyghur people don't have more children.
“China has simultaneously pursued a dual systematic campaign of forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women of childbearing age and interning Uyghur men of child-bearing years, preventing the regenerative capacity of the group and evincing an intent to biologically destroy the group as such,” reads the report.
The UN convention specifically outlines that any effort to destroy a population constitutes a genocide.
In addition to the mass internment and sterilization, the report found the Chinese government is actively trying to wipe out Uyghur culture and is transferring children to other parts of the country, away from their parents and families.
Diamond was the principal author of the report, but it drew on information from a wide range of experts, including former Liberal cabinet ministers Irwin Cotler, Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy.
Diamond said the genocide convention makes it mandatory for countries to act, and despite China's influence and economic heft, this issue cannot be ignored.
“We know that countries across the world including Canada are now implicated in complicity in genocide. And so that's actually a crime in itself,” he said. “We've done the legwork and I hope that our government
COUNTRIES ACROSS THE WORLD INCLUDING CANADA ARE NOW IMPLICATED IN COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE.
and other governments will do the right thing.”
After last week's vote on genocide in Parliament, Trudeau said he abstained because he wants a broader approach to the issue that includes working with allies.
“We need to make sure that we are moving forward appropriately and actually following up with the kinds of actions that are going to put an end to human rights abuses and that means working with our allies,” he said.
Trudeau insisted the government had not been silent in raising the plight of the Uyghurs