Why Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang

Abstract

ABSTRACT For the past four years, the region of Xinjiang in Northwest China has witnessed the largest forced incarceration of an ethno-religious minority anywhere in the world since the Second World War: upwards of one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been forced into internment camps for “re-education” and “thought transformation,” or into high-security prisons, or situations of forced labour. Recently, this situation came to the wider attention of the world when the word “genocide” – unqualified by the modifier “cultural” – was used to describe it. In this Reflection, I provide the background to the crisis, explain why the label “genocide” is now being used by growing numbers of scholars, activists, rights advocates, barristers, and politicians, and consider the legal and diplomatic channels that they propose to use to hold the PRC government to account.