Uighur Genocide - Western Reaction - 2020
Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, published a report in collaboration with the Associated Press on 28 June 2020 detailing a dramatic increase in recent years in the number of forced sterilizations and abortions targeting Uyghurs in region. In his report, Zenz concludes such policies may amount to a government-led campaign of genocide according to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Later the same day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement, citing this report and saying that the Chinese government is using forced sterilization, forced abortion, and coercive family planning against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.
As revealed by The Grayzone, an independent news website in the US, Adrian Zenz is a member of a far-right organization, the “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation”, established by the US government in 1983, and a senior fellow in a research group set up by the US intelligence community on the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang. Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist Christian who believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China, has transformed almost overnight from an unknown researcher into a go-to pundit on Xinjiang. A closer look reveals "the U.S. Government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz," they wrote.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) had come to dominate the Australian public’s understanding of China on many issues such as the education and training camps in Xinjiang, and the claimed Chinese military involvement in Australian universities. However, what’s worth noticing is that, according to The Australian Financial Review, ASPI is funded by Australian Department of Defence, military contractors and foreign governments including NATO, the US State Department and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Using the latest satellite imaging, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute identified 380 detention centers established across the XUAR since 2017 -- 100 more than previous investigations have revealed. ASPI found newly constructed detention facilities and extensions to several existing ones, with at least 61 detention sites undergoing new construction and expansion work between July 2019 and July 2020 and at least 14 facilities still under construction in 2020, according to new satellite imagery.
“The findings of this research contradict Chinese officials’ claims that all ‘trainees’ from so-called vocational training centres had ‘graduated’ by late 2019,” wrote ASPI researcher Nathan Ruser. “Instead, available evidence suggests that many extrajudicial detainees in Xinjiang’s vast ‘re-education’ network are now being formally charged and locked up in higher security facilities, including newly built or expanded prisons, or sent to walled factory compounds for coerced labour assignments,” he wrote.
By August 2020 US officials were weighing "various ways" to press China to halt abuses of Uyghurs, a US official said 26 August 2020 after reports Washington was considering labeling the treatment of Uyghurs as “genocide". Talks about the possible genocide designation are now being held by officials at the State Department, National Security Council, and Department of Homeland Security but are “still at the early stages,” the online journal Politico said in an Aug. 25 report, citing unnamed administration officials. “If there’s not enough consensus to use the term genocide, the administration could instead accuse the Chinese leadership of other atrocities, such as ‘crimes against humanity’ or ‘ethnic cleansing,’ Politico said.
Nury Turkel, a commissioner on the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said “USCIRF has been urging the Secretary of State to formally designate the atrocities that Communist China has committed as genocide,” Turkel said, adding that China’s separation of Uyghur children from their families and growing campaign to prevent Uyghur population growth fall within the list of provisions meeting the legal definition of genocide. “The U.S. government's official recognition of genocide would help to end atrocities,“ Turkel said.
In response to the Politico report, Andrew Bates, the spokesman for the presidential campaign of Joe Biden, issued a statement saying: “The unspeakable oppression that Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have suffered at the hands of China’s authoritarian government is genocide and Joe Biden stands against it in the strongest terms.” According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the U.S. State Department has “made statements that genocide has occurred” in five cases since the end of the cold War: Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004), and areas under the control of ISIS (2016 and 2017).
