The featured article from the sidebar of the What Others are Writing Section on the Homepage comes from the Georgetown Security Studies Review, a new source that we touched on in yesterday’s post. It seems to be a great new source for information that we will be checking daily but more on them and our featured article in a minute. The two other articles that we’d like to highlight are Russia leaves little room for Turkey in Azeri-Armenian truce – Al Monitor and Afghan peace talks starting to fall apart – Asia Times, both are very good articles on where things stand in those conflicts and the prospects of peace there. If you haven’t already done so, head over to the front page and check out some of the other candidates for today’s Featured Article!
Today’s article, Lest We Forget the Uyghurs comes from the Georgetown Security Studies Review and was originally published on October 27th of this year. The Georgetown Security Studies Review is a new source (for us), was founded in 2012 and describes themselves as:
… the oldest completely student-run security studies journal in the United States. As the official academic review of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, the GSSR’s mission is to contribute to security policy debates by exposing both specialists and general interest readers to a wide array of perspectives on both current and historical international affairs issues. In addition to full-length peer-reviewed articles, issues of the GSSR feature literature reviews, letters to the editors, and op-ed pieces.
Why This is Important
As the U.S. shifts its focus from the war on terror to the Great Power Completion with China it will be crucial to build international alliances that are able to apply pressure both domestically and abroad against Chinese influence. The genocide in Xinjiang province is ripe for both unconventional warfare exploitation and international awareness that can blunt the CCP’s aspirations of global dominance.
Our featured article written by Chris Harrington makes this case from the opening paragraph:
The Chinese Communist Party since 2017 has committed genocide against its Uyghur Muslim citizens in East Turkestan (Xinjiang province). The United States should officially designate this as a genocide and spearhead an international pressure campaign against the Chinese government. With an official designation of genocide, the United States will be able to lead an international campaign against it by spurring previously silent states to join as well as enforce potentially wide-ranging sanctions against the Chinese regime domestically.
While I think one could argue that the genocide began several years earlier (at least 2014) the point still stands and it will be interesting how the next (or current if you still have hope) administration addresses the situation there. Here are some key details about the situation there in East Turkestan. On a side note: Did you notice the interesting use of language by the author in referring to the province as East Turkmenistan, the traditional name instead of Xinjiang province? Genocide not only kills people; it destroys culture and cultural memory. The article continues with some details:
Over 1 million (and possibly up to 3 million) Uyghurs have been detained in at least 380 internment camps built throughout East Turkestan.[2] Gruesome torture is not an uncommon tactic used against those interned.[3] There have been reports of individual[4] and mass deaths inside these camps.[5] China has waged a mass forced sterilization campaign and birth control violations are punishable by internment.[6] Uyghur children have been taken away and put into state-run schools to be assimilated into Han Chinese culture.[7] Going by the definition presented by the United Nations, it is clear that China is currently committing a genocide against the Uyghurs. Its policies have led to deaths numbering at least in the hundreds, caused serious bodily and mental harm through repeated torture and indoctrination, subjected interned prisoners to brutal conditions, forcibly sterilized Uyghur women, and have sent children to assimilation schools. These internment camps are not the death camps of 1940s Nazi Germany, though it is “the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the second world war.”[8] The brutal tactics used against those interned and the purposeful reduction in the Uyghur birth rate cannot be anything other than a campaign to at least reduce, if not eliminate, the size of the Uyghur population. Assimilation is certainly a goal of the Chinese government but targeting the population size indicates something more nefarious.
On the reduction of the Uyghur birth rate, check out this mind-blowing statistic from the National Review:
Adrian Zenz, the German anthropologist who has provided most of the groundbreaking revelations on the Xinjiang mass-detention drive, published a new report detailing a systematic forced-sterilization and birth-control program to lower Uyghur birth rates. Among his findings were that birth rates plummeted 84 percent from 2015 to 2018 in Xinjiang’s two major Uyghur prefectures; that a mass campaign to sterilize 14 to 34 percent of Uyghur women in rural parts of the region was underway; and that the CCP planned to sterilize or implant intrauterine contraceptive devices in 80 percent of childbearing-age women in Xinjiang’s rural southern areas.
I don’t want to copy the whole article and strongly encourage you to read the entire thing but there is one more section I would like to highlight what an official genocide designation could do here in the U.S. (emphasis mine)
On the domestic front, the United States can make sure American companies do not utilize Uyghur forced labor themselves or through suppliers, or sell technologies to China that aid in crimes against Uyghurs. A report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute detailed specific American and other international companies that had potential ties to Uyghur forced labor including Nike, Amazon, Apple, and dozens more – this must be stopped now and prevented going forward.[14] The Trump administration has issued an advisory to American companies urging them to be wary of doing business with Chinese suppliers that use forced labor.[15] This step can be taken further with the official designation of genocide because it is a crime under both domestic and international law. Instead of merely cautioning American companies against such practices, the government can issue a wholesale ban against it with legal ramifications if they do anyways. The American law on genocide uses the same general criteria as the United Nations and it applies to any U.S. national involved in genocide even if it is committed outside the U.S.[16] Beyond these measures, and because the perpetrator of this genocide is the Chinese government itself, then perhaps even more restrictive sanctions in the style of Iran or Russia could be imposed rather than just against those specific firms or individuals directly involved.
At this point, there is little doubt about what is occurring in China in regards to the Uyghur genocide, we’ve written about it several times (here and here) and it is well documented in other places. When will the world and corporate America finally notice?