BREAKING THEIR LINEAGE, BREAKING THEIR ROOTS: CHINA'S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY TARGETING UYGHURS AND OTHER TURKIC MUSLIMS.

Breaking their lineage, breaking their roots, China’s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims. 

This report sets forth the factual basis for that conclusion, assessing available information about Chinese government actions in

“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”

China’s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims

In May 2014, the Chinese government launched the “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” (严厉打击暴力恐怖活动专项行动) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang or XUAR) against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.[1] Research by Stanford Law School’s Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic and Human Rights Watch, along with reports by human rights organizations, the media, activist groups, and others, and internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents, show that the Chinese government has committed—and continues to commit—crimes against humanity against the Turkic Muslim population.[2]

This report sets forth the factual basis for that conclusion, assessing available information about Chinese government actions in Xinjiang within the international legal framework.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), crimes against humanity are serious specified offenses that are knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population. 

“Widespread” refers to the scale of the acts or number of victims. A “systematic” attack indicates a pattern or methodical plan.

 Crimes against humanity can be committed during peace time as well as during armed conflict, so long as they are directed against a civilian population.

Crimes against humanity are considered among the gravest human rights abuses under international law. 

The specific crimes against humanity documented in this report include imprisonment or other deprivation of liberty in violation of international law;

 persecution of an identifiable ethnic or religious group; enforced disappearance; torture; murder; and alleged inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health, notably forced labor and sexual violence.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, located in China’s northwest, is the only region in China with a majority Muslim population. The Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other communities in the region are ethnically Turkic. 

Unlike the majority Han Chinese, who are primarily Chinese speakers, the Turkic population is predominantly Muslim and have their own languages. 

According to the 2010 census, Uyghurs made up 46 percent and Kazakhs 7 percent of the Xinjiang population.

The Chinese government’s oppression of Turkic Muslims is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years has reached unprecedented levels. 

As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities,[3] which include “political education” camps, pretrial detention centers, and prisons.

[4] Courts have handed down harsh prison sentences without due process, sentencing Turkic Muslims to years in prison merely for sending an Islamic religious recording to a family member or downloading e-books in Uyghur.

 Detainees and prisoners are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, cultural and political indoctrination, and forced labor. 

The oppression continues outside the detention facilities: the Chinese authorities impose on Turkic Muslims a pervasive system of mass surveillance, controls on movement, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance, cultural and religious erasure, and family separation.

The United States State Department and the parliaments of Canada and the Netherlands have determined that China’s conduct also constitutes genocide under international law. 

Human Rights Watch has not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time.

 Nonetheless, nothing in this report precludes such a finding and, if such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang—a group protected by the 1948 Genocide Convention—could also support a finding of genocide.

In 2017, according to official statistics, arrests in Xinjiang accounted for nearly 21 percent of all arrests in China, despite people in Xinjiang making up only 1.5 percent of the total population. 

Since 2017, Chinese authorities have used various pretexts to damage or destroy two-thirds of Xinjiang’s mosques; about half of those have been demolished outright. 

Important Islamic sacred sites have been demolished across the region.[5] As part of regional authorities’ intrusive “Becoming Families” surveillance, development, and indoctrination campaign, officials impose themselves for overnight stays at the homes of Turkic Muslims, a practice that authorities say “promote[s] ethnic unity.”

 In another particularly chilling practice, some Turkic Muslim children whose parents have been arbitrarily detained are placed in state institutions such as orphanages and boarding schools, including boarding preschools.[6]

The global response to these abuses has been increasingly critical.

 Some governments, such as Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the US, have imposed targeted and other sanctions on Chinese government officials.

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