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The US State Department has stated that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in a campaign directed against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
In a statement, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “I believe this genocide is ongoing and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy the Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state.”
The appointment was made in the last hours of the Triumph administration. But the entree Biden The team had previously expressed support for such a definition, labeling the crackdown on the Uyghur genocide in August last year.
The images appeared to show hundreds of prisoners blindfolded and shackled in a largely Muslim region of China.
And while Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has vowed to reverse a series of Trump foreign policy measures, he said he agreed with Pompeo’s determination.
In his determination of crimes against humanity, Pompeo cited “the arbitrary imprisonment or other serious deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, the forced sterilization, the torture of large numbers of arbitrarily detained, forced labor and the imposition of draconian measures restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement. “
Beijing is likely to react with fury.
At a press conference held last week in the Chinese capital, Communist Party official Xu Guixiang said: “This completely ‘genocide’ free fabrication regarding Xinjiang is the conspiracy of the century.”
Mike Pompeo said he believed the genocide was ongoing
Analysis: condemnation of China could be the only point of consensus between Biden and Trump
The fact that the United States calls China’s treatment of Uighurs and other minorities genocide is the most significant intervention on the issue. It may be lost in the splendor of today’s inauguration and in pressing internal US concerns, but it will reverberate for months and years.
China’s reaction is guaranteed to be apoplectic. But it will seek to portray the genocide designation as politically motivated, the last gasp of an outgoing administration and the personal revenge of Mike Pompeo, public enemy number one in Chinese propaganda.
Critics elsewhere might agree with some of that. The Trump administration was not well known for its protection of minorities and human rights, whether at home or abroad. The United States ignored calls to declare Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya as genocide, for example.
And President Trump previously sidestepped human rights issues in his dealings with China, initially preferring to focus on trade. His former national security adviser, John Bolton, alleged that in July 2019, President Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he was correct in building detention centers for Uighurs.
The appointment is not a curve ball for the Biden administration, which has expressed agreement, perhaps the only point of consensus between two very different administrations. For the entire division in the US, it is united in China.
But it could make things more difficult for America’s allies. The British government narrowly rejected an amendment to the legislation that would have added a genocide clause to commercial bills, a clause aimed directly at China. And the EU has recently concluded its own massive trade deal with China. The Biden administration may have a low opinion of all that, and the genocide designation adds more moral weight.
In practical terms, the designation legally allows the US to take some new measures, although none of them are massive. The power is in the symbolism. And that symbolism may be more apparent a year from now, when the 2022 Winter Olympics kick off in Beijing.
It’s hard to imagine Team America competing in a country accused by the US government of ongoing genocide. Would other countries join that boycott?
