Is China committing genocide in Xinjiang?
- Getty Images/WPA Pool
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Friday: "'The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise....'" Pretty plain language.
A little background: The Uighurs who have been fighting with the Han Chinese in the Xinjiang province are Muslims. Additionally, the Uighurs are originally of Turkic descent as is their language. So, many in Turkey feel a particular kinship with the embattled Uighurs of China's West.
But genocide is a big and complicated charge to level (especially at a country of such economic and political weight as China). Foreign Policy magazine's Passport blog explains:
It's not exactly that simple. There's a case to be made that China's suppression of the Uighurs combined with it's efforts to build the Han population in Xinjiang constitute genocide under the 1948 convention, which includes "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" as part of the definition. But this is a pretty broad interpretation, especially considering that the local Han population has been suffering attacks as well.
It seems a dicey political move for Turkey to make given China's clout - but also because Turkey itself has denied ongoing accusations of "genocide" in their own repression of the Armenians at the beginning of last century (background on that).
Nonetheless it's bad news for China which is struggling to contain violence in Xinjiang, a flare up of ethnic tensions that The Economist this week calls "Beijing's Nightmare". China's leaders are, of course, very unhappy with Mr. Erdogan's remarks.
But back to our question: Is China committing genocide in Xinjiang? Much like in Tibet, China has resettled thousands of ethnic Han Chinese into the region - one could argue in an effort to shift the demographics of the region. And now as the crackdown intensifies - we have images of troops policing the street to punctuate the statistics.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="537" caption="Peter Parks / Getty Images"]
[/caption]What do you think?
