19 January 2021
With just one day left in President Trump's term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has officially determined that China's campaign of mass internment, forced labor and forced sterilization of over 1 million Muslim minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity."
Why it matters: The U.S. has become the first country to adopt these terms to describe the Chinese Communist Party's gross human rights abuses in its far northwest.
What they're saying: "After careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that since at least March 2017, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang," Pompeo said in a statement, adding in a second determination that the CCP has also committed "genocide" there.
Details: Pompeo said "these crimes are ongoing" and include:
- Arbitrary imprisonment of over 1 million people.
- Forced sterilization.
- Torture of those detained.
- Forced labor.
- Restrictions on religious freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of movement.
Context: Late last year, Pompeo ordered an internal review, to be overseen by Morse Tan, U.S. ambassador-at-large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice, to determine whether China's actions in Xinjiang constituted genocide and crimes against humanity.
- The effort was the culmination of years of work at the State Department to help raise awareness of China's repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
- The Biden campaign has previously called China's actions in Xinjiang a "genocide." It had been unclear whether the Trump administration would make this formal determination before Biden assumed office.
- "If we had been able to do it sooner, we would have," a senior administration official said. "We have been working on this for years now. We have struggled from day one, since we came to see the contours of what is going on in Xinjiang, with what to call it."
What to watch: Though the U.S. is the first country to make this determination, senior administration officials expressed hope that other countries may soon follow suit.
- Last week, U.K. Foreign Minster Dominic Raab denounced China's "barbarism" in Xinjiang and announced heavy fines for companies that don't prove their supply chains are free of forced labor.
- The EU recently passed the European Magnitsky Law making it easier to punish human rights violators.
- The other side: China has pushed its international partners to oppose any criticism of its Xinjiang policies.
Background: China's northwest region of Xinjiang is home to around 11 million Uyghurs and several other Muslim-minority ethnic groups who have long faced severe religious and cultural repression at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
- After ethnic riots in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009 resulted in hundreds of deaths — and especially after the rise of the Islamic State attracted some Uyghur adherents — CCP leaders embarked on a campaign to wipe out what they viewed as the root of the problem: the Uyghurs' Islamic faith and their loyalty to their own ethnic and cultural identity, distinct from that of China's majority Han ethnic group.
- In early 2017, China began constructing a string of mass detention centers across Xinjiang capable of holding up to a million or more detainees. Survivor testimonies and Chinese government documents have revealed that detainees are often held in terrible conditions and spend their days enduring political indoctrination and in some cases physical abuse.
- Growing evidence of forced labor on a mass scale has resulted in calls for companies to extricate themselves from Xinjiang-based supply chains. The U.S. has banned the import of cotton and tomato products made in Xinjiang and has put numerous Chinese companies entities on an export blacklist due to their complicity in mass surveillance, detention, and forced labor.
Go deeper:
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.