A Cry for Help: London’s Uyghur Tribunal Investigates the Xinjiang Detention Camps
The Uyghur Tribunal based in London, U.K. has heard testimony from survivors of the detention camps in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Despite its lack of binding authority, the Tribunal may yet serve as a catalyst for positive change.
Uyghur men praying. Photo taken in 2010. Wikimedia Commons.
BY: AJ WOOD, STAFf member
The Tribunal
The Uyghur Tribunal is an independent tribunal established “to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations” by the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”). While the treatment of Uyghurs by the PRC arguably constitutes genocide as defined by the International Genocide Convention, the PRC vehemently rejects that characterization, instead portraying the camps as re-education centers to prevent and punish terrorist activities. The first set of hearings was held this year from June 4-7 and the second from September 10-13. Both heard evidence supporting the claim that China’s camps violate Article II of the Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Convention lists acts that constitute genocide when committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." The acts include: "(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." If the testimony gathered at the Tribunal is true, the PRC likely committed genocide under the Convention's definition by performing not just one, but all of these acts.
Witnesses described the PRC killing Uyghurs detained in prison, including siblings, simply for maintaining contact with their Uyghur family members outside the country. Death was so prevalent that at one point “dead [Uyghur] men [were] in line to get buried.”
Further, in forcing Uyghur detainees to admit to being separatists, the PRC threatened Uyghurs with capital punishment and used an electric stick to shock the detainees’ body parts. Witnesses also testified to sexual abuse and mental torture of both Uyghur men and women, with the police gang-raping Uyghur women in front of other Uyghur detainees.
According to testimony, the guards allowed each Uyghur detainee to occupy only one square meter of space to sleep and only offered one plastic bucket in the cell to be used as a toilet, causing Uyghurs detainees to suffer from kidney infections and severe hemorrhoids. Some detainees who entered the “black room” for interrogation never came back. Others did come back—with their fingernails pulled off and covered in blood.
Witnesses testified that the PRC forced Uyghur women to take pills which caused them to stop having periods and to undergo unwanted abortions, including some women who were seven to nine months pregnant.
Lastly, through their State Program, the PRC transferred Uyghur children to the care of the Chinese state and placed them into boarding schools. As a result, Uyghur children across the region are now being raised in a non-Mulsim, Mandarin-speaking environment: an existential threat to the preservation of Uyghur heritage, language, and culture.
Problems with Efficacy
The Tribunal can hear evidence of these atrocities, but it cannot do anything about them. In this respect, it is similar to the other major international courts. The International Criminal Court (“ICC”) is also unable to hear the case because China has entered a reservation against ICC jurisdiction, preventing anyone from suing the country there. While the independent Tribunal can make a final determination of whether the PRC has committed genocide against the Uyghurs, it does not have any powers of sanction or enforcement, so it cannot act as a prosecutor. Only a fact-finder.
The Tribunal faces other issues of efficacy. On one hand, potential witnesses are scared to come forward to speak due to fear of persecution of their family members in Xinjiang. On the other hand, despite the many witnesses who have boldly stepped forward to speak, the PRC has worked hard to weaken the credibility of the Uyghur Tribunal by calling it an “anti-China farce” organized by “people with ulterior motives” which has no legal jurisdiction over China. The PRC’s official statement calls the witnesses “individuals who make a living out of demonizing China” and claims that their statements of persecution are fabricated.
Potential Alternatives
Although the Uyghur Tribunal has no power of sanction or enforcement, it has shed light on the abuses occurring in Xinjiang within the international community and may yet serve as a catalyst for change.
For example, many individual countries, including the United States, have placed economic sanctions on China to apply pressure and encourage the country to cease its ill-treatment of the Uyghurs. In addition, corporations have also eliminated the use of Chinese cotton from their supply chains as they are predominantly sourced from Xinjiang which uses forced labor of the Uyghurs.
However, research has suggested that such sanctions exacerbate human rights conditions, or at the very least, are not significantly associated with decreased magnitude or duration of genocide. Further, specific to the PRC’s international presence, these types of economic sanctions on products such as cotton likely will not harm their economy. Even without the cotton trade, Xinjiang exports to the United States surged to $119.2 billion in the first three months of 2021.
Historically, sanctions against China have not achieved their goals. For instance, many nations approved sanctions after the 2008 Tibetan Unrest, but the leader of Tibet, Chen Quanguo, tightened the PRC’s grip on Tibet unphased. In an instance of history repeating itself, he was later transferred to Xinjiang to do the same. Under his leadership, the mass detentions of Uyghurs began in 2016. Therefore, given the current geopolitical landscape, the PRC is unlikely to change its Xinjiang policies in response to international sanctions.
While more sovereign nations can make firm acknowledgments of the PRC’s abuses, and more corporations can outsource their labor, it will likely require more to successfully end the abuses in Xinjiang. From a legal standpoint, there is not much more for the international community to do. The organizers of the Uyghur Tribunal hope that the evidence and testimony gathered there will shine a spotlight onto the Xinjiang camps and introduce the world to the victims.
AJ Wood is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. They graduated from the University of Oxford in 2020. AJ lived, studied, and worked in Xinjiang when Uyghurs were taken into detention centers in the masses.