State Department Human Rights Report Again Accuses China of Genocide in Xinjiang
March 31 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In a replay of Mike Pompeo’s ravings, the State Department’s annual human rights report for 2020 charges that in China, “genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against the predominantly Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.” These crimes, it says,
“were continuing and include: the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than 1 million civilians; forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and more restrictive application of China’s birth control policies; rape; torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained; forced labor; and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded almost immediately to the State Department with a scathing denunciation of the genocide accusation, charging the U.S. with “riding roughshod over international law.” Genocide is a very precisely defined term, she said, described at the end of World War II by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as specific acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Any charge of genocide must “survive a strict scrutiny of the facts,” Hua emphasized, and declaring that no “state, organization or individual is qualified and entitled to arbitrarily determine that another state has committed ‘genocide.’ ”
This charge against China, she continued, is the product of “lies and disinformation produced by anti-China forces,” and is “an outrageous insult and affront to the Chinese people and a gross breach of international law.” Many outside China, she said, “including in the U.S.,” have exposed and refuted these lies about Xinjiang. She again mentioned Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, “who has made it clear that the so-called Xinjiang issue is nothing but a U.S. strategic conspiracy to foment unrest in China and contain it from within.” As a major power, she said, “the U.S. has stooped so low as to turn a blind eye to the fact that Xinjiang enjoys security, prosperity and development and that the 25 million of all ethnic groups in the region live harmoniously together with solidarity.” Charging China with genocide based on the “accounts of few fake academics and false witnesses” only further exposes the U.S.’s “hypocrisy behind all the talk about rule of law and rules.” Hua appropriately charged that the State Department report is in fact “a reflection of the [U.S.’s] own crimes and sins committed in the past,” and went on to document U.S. attacks on Muslim countries, “inventing pretexts to stage wars against sovereign states, causing numerous civilian casualties, and many other examples..
