China violating every article of Genocide Convention per legal report on Uighurs

The Chinese government has violated every single article of the United Nations genocide convention in its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and is responsible for genocide, says a landmark legal study.

The 25,000-word paper, released by a nonpartisan think tank in the United States, is one of the first non-government legal examinations of China's treatment of Uighurs under the 1948 genocide convention.

Despite mounting evidence, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has vehemently denied committing massacres and violations against the Uighur Muslim minority, reports The Guardian.

International indignation and political and economic isolation have grown as a result of reports about the Uighurs. The persecution of the Uighurs has also been labeled a genocide by the US administration.

China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters in Beijing on Monday that accusations of genocide in Xinjiang "could not be more preposterous." Wang said, "It is a rumor invented with ulterior motives and a complete lie."

A finding of genocide may be made under the UN convention, which has been signed by 152 countries, including China, if one of five specified actions is violated. 

The CCP had violated all of them, according to the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, which accused the party of explicitly demonstrating an "intent to kill, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious community."

"The intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group is derived from objective proof, consisting of comprehensive state policy and practice, which President Xi Jinping, the highest authority in China, set in motion," the report said.

The five acts are: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

As evidence, the report cited reports of mass deaths, selective death sentences, and long-term imprisonment of elders, systemic torture and cruel treatment including sexual abuse and torture, interrogations and indoctrination, the targeted detention of Uighur community leaders and people of childbearing age, forced sterilisation, family separation, mass labour transfer schemes, and the transfer of Uighur children to state-run orphanages and boarding schools.

"The persons and entities perpetrating the above-indicated acts of genocide are all state agents or organs – acting under the effective control of the state – manifesting an intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group within the meaning of article II of the Genocide convention," the executive summary said.

In creating the report, all available and verifiable evidence was studied by dozens of experts on international law, genocide studies, Chinese ethnic policies and China, the institute said. It made no recommendations.

The release of the report comes in the middle of the CCP's most important annual political meetings, known as the "two sessions", when the major legislative body meets to approve new legislation, and when senior ministers front the press.

China's premier, Li Keqiang, is scheduled to take questions on Thursday. However, all press conferences are highly managed, with questions vetted ahead of time.