The Uyghur Tribunal, an independent People's Tribunal set up last year in Britain to investigate China’s actions against Uyghur, Kazakh and other Turkic Muslim populations, yesterday issued a 63-page Summary Judgment (full text). It concluded:
180. Torture of Uyghurs attributable to the PRC is established beyond reasonable doubt.
181. Crimes against humanity attributable to the PRC is established beyond reasonable doubt by acts of: deportation or forcible transfer; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty; torture; rape and other sexual violence; enforced sterilisation; persecution; enforced disappearance; and other inhumane acts.
It then went on to find China guilty of genocide through its imposed birth control and sterilization policies designed to reduce the Uyghur population. Article II(d) of the Genocide Convention includes in the definition of Genocide: " Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." The Tribunal said in part:
190. Accordingly, on the basis of evidence heard in public, the Tribunal is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the PRC, by the imposition of measures to prevent births intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as such, has committed genocide.
191. This Judgment, with no evidence of any mass killing, may be thought to diminish the perceived status of genocide as a crime. In one way it may do that, and if so, in one way, not necessarily a bad thing. The use of superlatives ... when attached to tragedy brings public attention, sometimes at a cost to other tragedies able to attract less attention despite being as serious.
The Tribunal however expressed some unease over its genocide finding, saying in part:
183. The Tribunal recognises that this may be the first public evidence-based determination of a genocide under Article II(d) of the Convention (or of crimes under statutes in similar terms).
184. The Tribunal would, as a whole, prefer not to make such a finding and to allow findings of genocide in law to match more closely the likely general public understanding of the word.
185. The Tribunal recognises that a finding of genocide based on control of childbirth may even seem to some close to lawful management by governments of societies elsewhere; in the back of some minds might be awkward and uncomfortable considerations of worldwide unsustainable population growth.
