Protecting the Uighur: Responsibility to Protect in China

Duration: 57 mins 27 secs

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Protecting the Uighur: Responsibility to Protect in China's image

Description:	Longstanding repressive Chinese policies towards Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are gaining increased international attention. At least 1 million people are thought to have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps, and there is mounting evidence suggesting that tens of thousands of people from the Uighur and other ethnoreligious minority communities are being subject to forced labour. Uighur cultural and religious sites have been destroyed, and government practices of forced sterilisations and abortions have been linked to an apparent policy to reduce birth-rates among the Uighurs, while more than half a million children have been forcibly removed from their families. What happens when Crimes against Humanity and Genocide are perpetrated by a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council? The situation in Xinjiang might be the severest test yet faced by the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). (How) can international society compel China to reverse it policies, and would failure to do so signal the start of a dystopian new era of international politics, reversing the uneven progress made since 1945? Does R2P have a place in these efforts? And what does Pillar 3 require of other powerful actors in this case?

Description:

Longstanding repressive Chinese policies towards Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are gaining increased international attention. At least 1 million people are thought to have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps, and there is mounting evidence suggesting that tens of thousands of people from the Uighur and other ethnoreligious minority communities are being subject to forced labour. Uighur cultural and religious sites have been destroyed, and government practices of forced sterilisations and abortions have been linked to an apparent policy to reduce birth-rates among the Uighurs, while more than half a million children have been forcibly removed from their families.

What happens when Crimes against Humanity and Genocide are perpetrated by a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council? The situation in Xinjiang might be the severest test yet faced by the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). (How) can international society compel China to reverse it policies, and would failure to do so signal the start of a dystopian new era of international politics, reversing the uneven progress made since 1945? Does R2P have a place in these efforts? And what does Pillar 3 require of other powerful actors in this case?


Created:	2020-11-11 22:01
Collection:	Centre for Geopolitics
Publisher:	Centre for Geopolitics
Copyright:	Centre for Geopolitics
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	Responsibility to Protect; Uighurs; China;


Abstract:	Panel: Nadira Kourt, Programme Manager at the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect Eva Pils, Professor of Law, King’s College London Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Chair: Thomas Peak, Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge

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