5 Fall 2021 enslaved, tortured, abused, raped, and murdered; the mass sterilization of Uyghur women, one of the coercive population control techniques that have drastically reduced the Uyghur population; the forced separation of 500,000 Uyghur children from their families; the massive assaults on Uyghur religion, culture, identity, language, and belief, which has included the destruction of thousands of mosques; and state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide targeting the Uyghurs, characterizing them as “cancerous tumors” that must be“eradicated”and worse. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), in cooperation with the Newsline Institute for Strategy and Policy, published in March 2021 a report titled “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination into China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention.”2 This is the first comprehensive evidence-based report, endorsed by over 30 leading genocide and international law scholars, documenting in detail the five acts constitutive of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.Yonah Diamond, Legal Advisor at RWCHR, and myself, recently published a complementary article in Project Syndicate,3 further elaborating on these unprecedented findings of fact and conclusions of law. The determination that these acts targeting the Uyghurs constitute genocide, a determination arrived at by both the Trump and Biden Administrations – a matter of rare agreement – has been similarly followed by other parliaments such as the UK and Lithuanian parliaments, as well as leading UK lawyers (who published an important report on the matter4). All this brings to memory the warnings of Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor Professor Elie Wiesel, who cautioned us of the danger of silence in the face of evil; of the danger of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide, where, as he put it, “indifference always means coming down on the side of the victimizer, never on the side of the victim.” Indeed, what makes the Holocaust – and the genocides that followed – so unspeakable, were not only the horrors of the Holocaust and the genocides themselves, but the fact that they were preventable. Nobody can say, for example, regarding the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, where 10,000 Tutsis were murdered every day for three months while the UN Security Council dithered and delayed, that we did not know. We knew, but we did not act. Just like the genocide in Darfur, we knew but we did not act. And now, regarding the Uyghurs, we know, and still, we are not acting. The case and causes of two imprisoned political prisoners in China, Dr. Wang Bingzhang and Huseyin Celil, are a looking glass into the ongoing massive repression in China, and the culture of impunity that underpins it. Dr. Wang Bingzhang, a Chinese doctor, received his Ph.D. in medicine at McGill University in 1982. His immediate family, including his siblings, wife, and children, are all Canadian citizens and residents. Upon graduation from McGill, Dr. Wang Bingzhang concluded that while it would be good for him to practice medicine, his struggle for democracy in China was even more important. Accordingly, he founded the China Overseas Democracy Movement. In 2002, while Wang was travelling inVietnam, he was illegally abducted by the Chinese authorities, brought back to China, and convicted on the trumped-up charges of“terrorism”and“espionage”after a closed trial, without legal representation, that only lasted half a day. He was then sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement. During his nineteen years in detention, he has suffered a series of debilitating strokes. His physical and mental health have deteriorated rapidly, and he has had no access to the necessary medical and psychological care. As a result of a decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, where my argument regarding the illegality of Dr. Wang Bingzhang’s treatment was heard in 2002, I have been acting as Dr. Wang Bingzhang’s international legal counsel and I have called for his release. Leading international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the RWCHR, have joined this call. 2. Newslines Institute for Strategy and Policy and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention,”NEWSLINES INSTITUTE, March 2021, available at https://newlinesinstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/Chinas-Breaches-of-the-GC3-2.pdf 3. Irwin Cotler and Yonah Diamond, “China’s Uyghur Genocide is Undeniable,”PROJECT SYNDICATE, June 3, 2021, available at https://www2.project-syndicate.org/ commentary/evidence-of-china-uyghur-genocide-byirwin-cotler-and-yonah-diamond-2021-06 4. Jeffrey D. Sachs and William Schabas, “The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified,”PROJECT SYNDICATE, Apr. 20, 2021, available at https://www.project-syndicate. org/commentary/biden-should-withdraw-unjustifiedxinjiang-genocide-allegation-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-andwilliam-schabas-2021-04
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