A London tribunal claimed that China subjected Uyghur Muslims to genocide through forceful sterilizations and abortions. The barbaric, inhumane actions were apparently authorized by Beijing's highest officials. The tribunal's chair Sir Geoffrey Nice QC noted on Thursday, December 9 that hundreds of people are apprehended in Xinjiang without any justification. He stressed that this level of repression could not take place 'if a plan was not authorized at the highest levels.'
The panel that is investigating the human rights violation consists of nine lawyers and human rights experts. According to the DailyMail, the panel published their opinion after taking into consideration allegations of torture, rape, and inhumane treatment during two evidence sessions earlier this year.
The panel emphasized their findings that the torture, imprisonment, forced transfer, enforced disappearances, rape and sexual violence, persecution, and other inhumane acts of thousands of Uyghurs have indeed occurred. The panel added in its findings that President Xi Jinping and other senior officials are to be held responsible for the same. Beijing, however, has denied the allegations.
'Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committed genocide'
The tribunal in question was set up at the request of the World Uyghur Congress, which is the largest group in the world that represents exiled Uyghurs and lobbies the international community to raise their voice against China over Uyghurs' alleged abuses. The panel released a 63-page long report claiming that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 'intended to destroy a significant part' of the Muslim Uyghur minority in the country's northwest and 'committed genocide' to pursue their goal. The panel, however, did not find evidence of mass killings.
Chair Nice further noted that the CCP carried out a 'comprehensive system of measures to 'optimize' the Uyghur population in Xinjiang' by controlling their birth rate including forced sterilization, birth control, and abortion. The report warned that the future population of Uyghurs will be 'smaller than it would have been.' "Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, with some estimates well in excess of a million, have been detained by PRC [People's Republic of China] authorities without any, or any remotely sufficient reason, and subjected to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity, and inhumanity," the tribunal's report claimed.
'Gang rapes and penetration with electric shock rods'
The tribunal's report further claimed that the Uyghur went through extreme sexual violence, including gang rapes and penetration with electric shock rods and iron bars. Women were even subjected to rape by men willing to pay for the same. The report also found evidence of enforced abortions, forcefully removal of wombs from women, killing of newborns, and mass enforced sterilization through the use of IUD devices only removable by surgery. According to the said report, some Uyghurs were placed in tanks filled with cold water up to their necks, shackled in metal chains, and immobilized for months on end.
China refuted the allegations
Beijing dismissed the tribunal's findings and stated that it was an attempt by the Congress 'to concoct a political tool to smear China.' "This so-called tribunal has neither any legal qualifications or any credibility," the foreign ministry said.
