4 Years After Genocide Declaration, Uyghur Advocates Say Not Enough Is Being Done

WASHINGTON—Four years after the London-based Uyghur Tribunal declared that the Chinese persecution of Uyghurs constituted a genocide, human rights advocates have said the problem is still ongoing.

Dec. 9 was the anniversary of that declaration, which states that China is guilty of crimes against humanity, including torture, forced sterilization, enslavement, and murder of Uyghur Muslims.

The United States, during President Donald Trump’s first term, had made a similar declaration in January 2021 and imposed penalties, including sanctions and import restrictions, on entities connected to the persecution.

Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told The Epoch Times that some governments may be hesitant to intervene because they do not want to risk harming trade relations with China.

“This is immoral, and the governments should fulfill their obligations under international law,” Kanat said.

Although 153 nation-states have signed onto pacts such as the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, they have been loath to move against the Chinese regime, he said.

The concern about economic backlash is not unfounded.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) retaliated against the Uyghur Tribunal even before the report was released, issuing sanctions against its members and other UK human rights organizations, along with five members of the UK Parliament.

Kanat’s comments came as Uyghur advocacy groups, including the Uyghur American Association and the Center for Uyghur Studies, met in Washington to ask officials around the world to take action.

They urged Congress to pass legislation such as the Uyghur Genocide Accountability and Sanction Act, which aims to end the CCP’s practice of harvesting organs from Uyghurs.

“There are now 22 bills in Congress that impose costs on the Chinese government, and on the Chinese companies that profit from the atrocities,” Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told The Epoch Times.

Another initiative, the Uyghur Policy Act, was introduced by Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) in April.

Among other mandates, it asks the secretary of state to facilitate the closure of Chinese detention centers and reeducation camps and to provide State Department employees with Uyghur language training.

The Chinese regime’s persecution of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region began in 2014, with the implementation of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “counterterrorism” campaign, according to the tribunal’s report.

This gave rise to a reeducation campaign in 2017, which purported to “stabilize” ethnic unrest in the region by 2021.

Victims of the CCP’s push to bring the Uyghurs under cultural control were “subjected to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity,” the report states.

“Many of those detained have been tortured for no reason, by such methods as pulling off fingernails, beating with sticks, detaining in ‘tiger chairs’ where feet and hands were locked in position for hours or days without a break, confined in containers up to the neck in cold water, and detained in cages so small that standing or lying was impossible,” the report reads.