[Genocide] is a very charged word. Itâs a very abused word. Some people claim it where it doesnât exist, for political gain, and they deny it where it does exist, for political reasons as well.
CRAIG MOKHIBER, director, New York office of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights and lawyer for the OHCHR in Geneva and New York (1992â2023)1
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1 Crying âGenocide!â as the âAbuse of Abusesâ
The abuse of terms for political ends is a constant in certain circles. A Trump-appointed US Federal Judge in Texas issued a 2025 ruling against a Trump policy, by barring use of the late 18th Centuryâs Alien Enemies Act (AEA)2 to deport members of Venezuelaâs Tren de Arena (TdA) criminal gang. Trump designated TdA a âForeign Terrorist Organizationâ and proclaimed its members ââliable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.ââ The AEA, used only in three US wars, is invocable âWhenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.â The court found AEA enactment era records that show âuse of âinvasionâ and âpredatory incursionâ refers to an attack by military forces. It noted Trump did not even suggest Venezuela had directed TdA to conquer the US or assume control over part of it. TdAâs conduct was thus not an invasion or predatory incursion for purposes of the AEA, whose invocation, the court said, was âcontrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statuteâs terms.â3
Trump officials nevertheless tried again to abusively apply the term âinvasion.â They announced that the right of habeas corpus could be suspended in immigration cases, citing the Constitution Article I, which says it is a privilege that can be suspended âin cases of rebellion or invasion [where] the public safety may require it.â Habeas had been suspended four times before, including by Abraham Lincoln in Maryland during the Civil War and by Franklin Roosevelt in Hawaii after Japanâs attack on Pearl Harbor. It had never been used to remove the rights of immigrants, as migration is not an invasion.7
At the same time as legal terms were distorted to further state policy as to deportations, the Trump administration abused another term for political ends. When several Tesla facilities were hit by Molotov cocktail-wielding critics of Trumpâs then-ally Elon Musk, US Attorney General Pam Bondi called the actions âdomestic terrorismâ and threatened punishment with up to 20-year imprisonment under 18 U.S.C Ch. 113B: Terrorism.8 Its section 2331 says âdomestic terrorismâ is âactivities that (B) appear to be intended â (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by
Another example of potential abuse of a term involves âarmed conflict,â in the context of the Haitian governmentâs fight against gangs that control of 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Haiti hired private contractors to carry out armed drone strikes, which by mid-2025 had killed several hundred gang members. An armed conflict exists only if armed groups are organized, have a clear chain of command, and a commander who issues and enforces orders. If there is an armed conflict, a party to it can carry out offensive operations, such as drone strikes, as long as it seeks to minimize collateral damage. If there is no armed conflict, then lethal force can only be used if there is an imminent threat to a personâs life. A security firm owned by Erik Prince, a prominent US Trump donor, operates many drones used by the Haitian government. The strikes have not broken the gangs by killing leaders or led to criminal convictions of members or taking territory from them. The leader of the main gang coalition threatened to also acquire drones.11
Terms like âinvasionâ or âterrorismâ and âarmed conflictâ are abused, but even âabuseâ is abused. For example, the first Trump administrationâs State Department released a collection of documents entitled âThe Chinese Communist Partyâs Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiangâ â Chinaâs large, predominantly ethnic minority, northwestern region. It deals with actions and practices in 2017â2021, mostly undocumented, that the US government declares objectionable â if done by China, but not if done by the US in the many countries where it has used force.12 The State Department catalog of âabusesâ fails to acknowledge that a complex mobilization was needed in those years to deal with terrorism and other, often violent, illegalities in Xinjiang.
Hindu mobs took murderous revenge on Muslims for a train fire that killed Hindu pilgrims. Over the course of nearly 3 months, more than 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were accused of negligence and even complicity. One horrified federal official called it a âstate-sponsored massacre.â15
Several US Zionist leaders deployed the term pogrom after fights in 2024 between protestors and counter-protestors at a demonstration in front of a Los Angeles synagogue where a sale of land in Palestineâs West Bank, to Jews only, was held. The sale violated international law because it involved an occupied territory and was racially discriminatory, but US President Joe Biden, Governor Gavin Newsome, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass denounced the protest. Bass has been Vice Chair of the Board of the US governmentâs National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a regime change agency that finances Uyghur
The term âpogromâ was also misused to describe 2024 attacks in Amsterdam on supporters of Israelâs Maccabi football team visiting Netherlands. Clashes occurred after Maccabi supporters chanted anti-Arab racist and pro-genocide slogans, assaulted people of Arab appearance and, burned Palestinians flags. Pro-Palestinian North African Dutch youths inflicted minor injuries on several dozen Maccabi supporters, but no one was killed. Far-right anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders nevertheless termed this a pogrom. Other Dutch, as well as rightist Israeli politicians did the same, despite the bloodless nature of the altercations.17 Those who assaulted the Maccabi supporters were prosecuted and received prison sentences; all charges against Maccabi supporters who assaulted âArabsâ were dismissed.18
An incipient pogrom had occurred in the occupied West Bank in 2023. After Palestinian gunmen killed two Israelis, a mob of hundreds of Israeli settlers burned homes and cars in the town of Huwara and killed a Palestinian. Israelâs West Bank Commander, Major General Yehuda Fuchs called the action âA pogrom done by outlaws.â Israelâs Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees Jewish settlement in the West Bank, said however, âI think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it,â meaning that the authorities, rather than a mob, should demolish the town.19 A Canadian journalist has pointed out however that the US would say to critics of Israel that âyou cannot use words and phrases like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing. Thatâs racist, thatâs anti-Semitic,â but that the US employs such terms about Xinjiang with much less reason.20
Predictably, the term âpogromâ is abused as part of a political stratagem. A mob made up of several hundred Muslim ethnic minority people in Dagestan, Russiaâs southern-most republic, stormed the regionâs main airport, looking to vent their anger over the bombing of Gaza by seeking out Israeli passengers
The archetypal pogrom had been carried out, mostly by ethnic Moldovans, in the Russian Empire city of Kishinev (Chisinau), Bessarabia in 1903. It occurred after a local newspaper promoted a âblood libel,â a false claim that Jews had murdered a Christian boy to use his blood in a ritual. Of the cityâs 55,000 Jews, 49 were cruelly murdered. Some 500 Jews were wounded, 600 women were raped, and 1,500 homes were destroyed. The local authorities supported the pogromists and the Czar excused their murders. Two years later, much worse pogroms happened throughout the Russian Empireâs Pale of Settlement for Jews: as many as 200,000 Jews were murdered in 600 massacres.22 If what happened in Dagestan in 2023 were a pogrom â it may not have been even an attempted one, as it is unclear that murder was intended â it would have been the worldâs first bloodless pogrom. Calling it such however served to reinforce the ongoing US campaign against Russiaâs government.
Genocide has been called an âoften abused term,â23 a âmuch-abused termâ24 a âwidely-abused termâ25 or even âthe most abused term.â26 Its abuse is part of politically-motivated promotions of ignorance about atrocities. Attention is diverted to lesser order or unintended instances of mass deaths, while occluding or marginalizing discussions of higher order and intended catastrophes. The stratagem has been employed as to the catastrophes that liberal Western regimes have deliberately induced, such as the millions who died in exterminations and mitigatable famines in India, Ireland, and elsewhere in the British
Many countries have also been subjected to inaccurate, politically-designed atrocity claims. The most calumnious of these is that a genocide has been committed.30 The US military, for example, has carried out many real atrocities in unjust wars,31 but misleading charges have also been levelled in relation to two just wars that US forces fought. One claim concerns the Union armyâs Devilâs Punchbowl camp for freed slaves in Natchez, Mississippi during the Civil War; the other is about the Rhine Meadows camps for German prisoners of war at World War IIâs end.
Defenders of the Confederacy have called the Devilâs Punchbowl camp a Union âgenocide against blacks,â alleging that 20,000 African Americans were killed there or allowed to die through starvation and disease.32 No basis for the figure is provided. African American historian Clifford Boxley has noted that camp deaths were not intentional, as âNatchez had a huge influx of refugee ex-slaves that the Union was not equipped to handle,â with deaths inevitable.
An elaborate analysis argues that the Devilâs Punchbowl was âcompletely a manufactured crisis by the defeated Confederacy loyalists, which was designed to maximize suffering of emancipated slaves.â As the Union army advanced, slaveholders retained able-bodied slaves and cast off the old, very young, and decrepit, who then fled to an army unable to even provision itself. Slaveholders thus created the plight of the Devilâs Punchbowl refugees and many died despite their liberatorsâ efforts. The ratio of Black refugees in Natchez was six women and children to one man and many men became soldiers. Those who remained were paid to work for the military, but their mobilization led to inaccurate claims that they were âforced laborers.â Half the 4,000 freed slaves in Natchez died, mostly from smallpox. The army quarantined the infected, giving rise to an inapt terming of the Devilâs Punchbowl as a âconcentration camp.â34
The Devilâs Punchbowl tale was part of a larger narrative of the âhorrors of Reconstruction.â From 1865 to 1877, the US government took hesitant steps to dismantle white domination in the defeated South. From the 1890s to the 1940s, a wholly negative narrative of Reconstruction was propagated by Prof. William Dunning and the many academics he trained, plus by popularizers, such as Clyde Bowers and Margaret Mitchell, authors of racist best-sellers, The Tragic Era (1929) and Gone with the Wind (1936). The Dunning School attacked Reconstruction as âa conspiracy by vindictive radical Republicans to subjugate southern whites at bayonet point.â35
After almost four decades of anti-Reconstructionism, a counter-narrative emerged with WEB DuBoisâ book Black Reconstruction (1935), although it took the later Civil Rights Movement to fully negate the negative narrative. The view of leading historian of Reconstruction Eric Foner is now a consensus: that the âhorrors of Reconstructionâ discourse âhelped freeze the mind of the white South in bitter opposition to any change in the regionâs racial system ⦠the fundamental flaw in the Dunning School was the authorsâ deep racism,â and âracism shaped not only their interpretations of history but their research methods and use of historical evidence.â36
Deaths were not part of a plan of âannihilation,â as Bacque and his supporters argued. Indeed, the camps were mainly controlled by German military police, some of them corrupt. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson also concluded in 2004 that the death rate for American-held German POWâs was among the lowest experienced by surrendered combatants during and after the war.40 A 2004 study showed German POWâs in the US were better treated than African American soldiers.41 By then, Bacque had doubled down on his claims; in a 1997 book he asserted the Allies brought about 5.7 million premature German deaths in 1946â1950.42 Historians refuted that claim as well. They also pointed out that Bacqueâs work represented an effort by the extreme right to gain mainstream acceptance.43
Hegemonic false assertions made since the Civil War about forced labor and concentration camps in the Devilâs Punchbowl and since the 1940s about atrocities in the Rhine Meadow POW camps have their counterpart in current Western claims of genocide and other international crimes against Uyghurs, Chinaâs largest ethnic minority group. China is a US-sized territory, but has 1.4 billion people, 4.2 times the US population. In 2020, 8.9% of Chinese were ethnic minorities, up from 6.7% in 1982. The minority population has increased much faster than the national population, which is now decreasing. That is indicated by 11% of Chinese children being ethnic minorities in 2020, up from 7.6% in 1982.44
Uyghurs are the major Turkic minority in Chinaâs northwestern region of Xinjiang. It is an area that is one-fourth desert, but is also one-sixth of Chinaâs territory, the same size as the USâs Alaska and three times the size of France. Xinjiang, however, only has about 5.5% of Chinaâs arable land (7.1 million hectares), as one-third of Chinaâs salt deserts are in the region.45 That would be problematic were it not for Xinjiangâs low population â less than 2% of Chinaâs.
The region had almost 26 million people at the 2020 census, 14.9 million (58%) of whom were ethnic minorities. Uyghurs were the largest group at 11.6 m. People of Chinaâs majority ethnic group, Han, were 10.9 million or 42% of Xinjiang 2020 census population. In terms of total population, the Han proportion has been fairly steady for the last half-century: it was, in 1964 33%; in 1978, 41.6%; in 1982, 40.5%; in 1990, 37.6%; in 2000, 40.6%; in 2006, 42.6%; in 2010, 40.5%; and in 2020, 42.24%.46
The census counts of the Han proportion of Xinjiangâs population have thus all been in the 38â42% range since 1978. The census, however, counts all those present in Xinjiang for the past six months, including temporary residents. Han, however, were only 31.6% of all people with their household registration (hukou
Xinjiangâs economy was traditionally centered on agriculture, but no longer. In 2020, the industrial sector had a 26.3% share of the economy, while farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery had 15.3%. Other sectors were construction, 8.7%; wholesale and retail, 4.9%; finance, 7.9%; hotel and catering, 1.0%; transport, storage and post, 4.4%; real estate 3.9% and other services, 27.6%.48 Xinjiang has seven major industries: âgreen chemical production, cotton and textile apparel, new materials, new energy, equipment manufacturing, distinctive services, agricultural products, and deep processing.â49
Southern Xinjiang, the place of Uyghur concentration, is 65% of the regionâs territory. Northern Xinjiangâs better climate results in much less drought and salinity however, making it more suitable for agricultural production. The regionâs main prefecture level cities are northern, as are the main traffic arteries, highways and railroad stations. Counties in the south are small, with long distances between them and the more developed north. The only southern city with a high GDP is Korla, the capital of Bayingoleng Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture, which has rich petroleum resources and significant tourism.50 Southern Xinjiangâs population density is low by regional and national standards. It was only 8.08 per km in 1998â2006, but that already exceeded the density threshold of seven people per sq km in an arid area.51
A study found that in Xinjiangâs 99 counties and districts, from 2001 to 2020, urban/rural industrial convergence was greater in the north. In the south, it
Xinjiang ranks 19th among Chinaâs 31 provincial-level jurisdictions in per capita disposable income. It increased some 75% in 2013â2020.53 In 2013 it was Y13,700, but grew at an average of 7% annually, to reach Y30,899 in 2024 or 75% of Chinaâs national figure.54 Per capita income in largely Uyghur-populated rural southern Xinjiang grew in purchasing power terms by 529% between 2000 and 2020. Southern average income was 52% of Chinaâs average in 2000, but 67% of in 2020.55 Uyghurs outside southern Xinjiang, about one-fourth of the total, likely have a smaller ethnic income gap. In 1993, âthe income of Uighur peasants was just over Y700, while that of Han living in Xinjiang was over Y2,600â56 because most Han were urban. A US scholar noted in a 2013 however that âeconomically, Xinjiang has dramatically improved relative to
By 2011, average monthly income of Uyghurs in the regionâs capital, Urumqi, was Y892, while those of Han was Y1,141.58 That Uyghur incomes were 78% of Han incomes in the regional capital disconfirms unsupported assertions that Uyghurs have been âlocked out of jobs and enterprises in [Xinjiang] created by industrialization since the economic liberalization of [China] began in the late 1970sâ59 or that in Xinjiang âthe beneficiaries from the economic development are mostly Han Chinese, whereas the Uyghurs face economic discrimination and barely participate from (sic) economic growth.â60
The Uyghur/national income gap is thus substantial, but diminishing. African American median household income in the US is two-thirds of median white household income. Uyghurs, however, are much more rural than the national population â about 70% compared to 36%. African Americans however are more urban than US whites. Black Americans, who are about 12.5% of the US population also held only 3.4% of the USâs total wealth, while whites, who are about 62% of the population had 84.2% of the wealth.61
3 Genocide by Thee, but Not by Me
The claim of Uyghur genocide is a political stratagem, generally defined as a careful plan to gain political support for a causeâs actions and ideas by outwitting potential opponents, often by devious means. A stratagem may be carried
Five million is frequently cited as the number of non-Jews killed by the Nazis. The figure is inaccurate and was apparently an invention of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, he began to refer to âeleven million victimsâ of the Holocaust, six million Jews and five million non-Jews in the 1970s. Wiesenthal later admitted making up the figure to promote interest in the Holocaust among non-Jews. Lipstadt says âhe chose five million because it was almost, but not quite, as large as six million.â The number of non-Jewish civilians murdered for racial or ideological reasons in concentration camps, historian Yehuda Bauer estimates, was no more than half a million.65
Prof. Lipstadt concluded that âAny falsification with respect to the Holocaust, whatever its purpose may be, gives comfort and solace, not to speak
[They are] early-stage âcancersâ that meet the microscopic definition of the disease (what a pathologist sees through the microscope) but not the clinical definition (a condition that is highly likely to grow and cause symptoms and has the potential to kill a person) ⦠anything but the dreaded âCâ word.
Mislabeling less threatening medical conditions as cancer is consequential; it âoften leads to unnecessary treatment, disfigurement, side effects and a constellation of other psychological, relationship and financial issues,â while âchanging the label would make matters considerably less stressful for patients and their families. It would greatly reduce unnecessary treatments.â68
Mislabeling actions or processes as genocide often leads to harming the people of the accused state through negative racialization, sanctions, or even armed attack. It may lead to political and financial support for undeserving or even malign groups, as with âUyghur genocideâ claims. Western states, especially the US, have demeaned Chinese, imposed damaging sanctions against China, and backed émigré groups who make wholly unsupported assertions about Xinjiang.
The idea that elites in the West do not take genocide as seriously as it is taken elsewhere is regarded as wholly implausible, as their politicians, media and NGOâs do label some actions as genocidal, at least where the accused are non-Western.71 Yet, as a Hong Kong Canadian columnist has put it, âAmerica is obsessed with other peopleâs genocides, even some that might not qualify as such. It seems to think that such public discourse among its citizens is salutary. Perhaps that would be more so if they had paid more attention to the genocides committed in their own national history.â72
Todayâs agitation over the âUyghur genocideâ motif sheds light on the way in which, since its production at the end of the Second World War, the word genocide has appeared from the outset as a political issue, an issue of discourse warfare and great ideological maneuvers rather than of law and justice.73
Another political stratagem is US elitesâ assertion that China subsidizes âexcess capacityâ in green technology. That claim ignores substantial US government subsidies of electric vehicle producers and consumers, as well as the need to make low-carbon alternative energy products affordable to combat climate change. As China-specialized US economist Stephen Roach has put it, âPoliticians who want to restrict a nation like China, which provides green technology at low cost and high quality in areas like electric vehicles (EVâs) and solar batteries, that is purely a political agenda that makes no sense from an economic comparative advantage point of view.â75 The same is true of the âinflationary use of the termâ genocide. A Rice University historian of human rights has said of that: âCharges of genocide generally do have political effects ⦠The choice of the term [is] therefore itself eminently political.â76
When I use a word,â Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, âit means just what I choose it to mean â neither more nor less.â âThe question is,â said Alice, âwhether you can make words mean so many different things.â âThe question is,â said Humpty Dumpty, âwhich is to be master â thatâs all.77
Very often the term genocide is used loosely in common language by people to refer to the biggest, gravest crime because somehow it sounds far worse than war crimes or crimes against humanity. But, legally speaking, the definition of genocide is very narrow ⦠The intention to physically exterminate a group is the main criterion for this crime.80
In the public consciousness of international law, you have a hierarchy with genocide at the top, so obviously victim groups want to go for the gold standard. This is appalling because crimes against humanity are themselves extremely serious. Thatâs why they were a major indictment in the Nuremberg trials â they covered what is now called the Holocaust. Genocide wasnât one of the indictments at Nuremberg, it was crimes against peace, aggressive warfare, crimes against humanity and war crimes.81
reference to âintentâ sets it apart from other crimes under international law. The ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda] and ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia] Statutes define crimes against humanity, for instance, by referring to acts âcommitted as part of a widespread and systematic attackâ against certain civilian populations. Although it is understood that the actor must engage purposively in the prohibited conduct (such as killing or causing serious harm), there is no explicit reference to the actorâs intent with respect to the widespread, systematic character of the attacks. Genocide, by contrast, requires, at the very least, an awareness on the part of the actor of the discriminatory nature of his actions.87
Some Western scholars propose to redefine genocide by eliding it with crimes against humanity, through eliminating genocideâs required proof of a special
Assertions of a Xinjiang genocide scarcely mention deaths. When, in early 2021, the US first made the accusation, an official âsaid the best rationale for the genocide label was the use of forced sterilizations, birth control and family separations to destroy Uighur identity.â92 A 2022 European Parliament resolution on Xinjiang said nothing about killings, but asserted that âcredible evidence about birth prevention measures and the separation of Uyghur children from their families amount to crimes against humanity and represent a serious risk of genocide.â93 These statements indicate that Western politicians did not believe the unevidenced claims made by Uyghur émigré groups that many Uyghurs had died through repression. They sought to bolster the politically-useful charge of genocide by providing unevidenced substitute genocidal acts for the mass killings that have always characterized recognized genocides.
Besides being banned by treaty, genocide and its advocacy are the subject of some countriesâ domestic laws. Canada, for example, has Criminal Code Section 318 (1), making any advocate or promoter of genocide liable to imprisonment for up to five years imprisonment. US Code 18 US Code § 1091, the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987 (Proxmire Act), adopts
The threat of genocidal actions in the US is not insubstantial.96 No one has been indicted under the Proxmire Act however and the US is one of the few countries where incitement to genocide is âprotected free speech.â Supposedly, it could become criminal if the advocacy is âso pervasive that it becomes harassmentâ or âis expressed in such a way that it is a true threatâ;97 yet, even then advocacy of genocide is not punished. Israelâs Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted in Israel of racist incitement and support for a terrorist group, was to deliver a speech in Brooklyn, New York in 2025. A woman walking near the venue was mistaken for a pro-Palestinian protestor and set upon by a pro-Israel mob of hundreds of men and boys who chased her, threatened to rape her, and bashed her head, all the while chanting âdeath to Arabs.â Police did not intervene. Ironically, the woman turned out to be a Jewish Israeli citizen. Despite the threats, harassment and actual violence of the chanters of a genocidal slogan, none were charged with incitement to genocide; instead, five pro-Palestinian protestors were arrested.98
There has been a âdecades-long pattern of the US government denying, minimizing, downplaying and rationalizing genocide and related crimes against humanity by American allies.â That includes Israelâs actions in Gaza, where genocide is not yet proven, but has been declared âplausibleâ by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the institution that can adjudicate a charge of genocide laid against a state. The US State Department calls the ICJ view
That selective approach is in line with the perspective evinced by prominent Trump ally Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). He stated in 2025 that âwe have to take our friends where we find them ⦠what matters, in the end, is less whether a country is democratic or non-democratic, and more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American.â101 Trumpâs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a 2025 security conference that included âauthoritarianâ states proclaimed that âWe are not here to pressure other countries to embrace or adopt our politics or ideology. We respect you, your traditions and your militaries. And we want to work with you where our shared interests align.â102 That view allows the US to accept as legitimate rule by the Communist Party of Vietnam, but not by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), because Vietnam cultivates friendly relation with the US,103 while US elites regard China as a counter to their global hegemony or even as an enemy. Hegseth, at the security conference, labelled China a âthreat.â
4 Re-inventing âGenocideâ in Xinjiang
While they have denied a plausible genocide in Gaza, the Biden and Trump Administrations, along with a half dozen Western parliaments, have said genocide in Xinjiang is a certainty. Western analysts have even claimed, contrary to the Genocide Convention, that âUyghur genocideâ can be based not on
Such inventions are necessary because Uyghur émigrés and the Western politicians and NGOâs that have taken up their cause make unevidenced assertions about Xinjiang events that have little or no relation to the strictures of the Genocide Convention. Their divorce from reality has not been because they are unable to recognize it; rather, it represents a stratagem that intersects with a larger program to isolate and contain China as a potential challenger to US hegemony.
The present work looks at key aspects of claims of intended destruction of Xinjiang ethnic groups, using concepts and empirical studies that frame legal and common understandings of genocide. It engages the origin of relevant Convention provisions and judicial and scholarly interpretations of those provisions, both in the Xinjiang case and with respect to the surfeit of asserted genocides globally. Particularly considered is whether a decline in Xinjiang birthrates and placement of children outside their families are related to the concepts of genocide.
An attempted cultural genocide may more accurately describe what is going on in Xinjiang. There is no attempt to rid China of the Uyghurs, no ethnic cleansing is contemplated, any more than was intended for
Tibet. It seems to be the Chinese strategy [is] to counter protesting ethnic groups as political problems that must be resolved through brutal forced re-education (assimilation). One might predict that a more docile Uyghur population will eventually be tolerated and accepted as a separate ethnic group as, for example, the Tibetans were.106
University of London Tibet specialist Robert Barnett, speaking of both Tibet and Xinjiang has said of government efforts in the two regions that âThey are not trying to eradicate these cultures. They are surgically removing and theyâre surgically grafting.â107
customary international law limits the definition of genocide to those acts seeking the physical or biological destruction of all or part of the group. Hence, an enterprise attacking only the cultural or sociological characteristics of a human group in order to annihilate these elements which give to that group its own identity distinct from the rest of the community would not fall under the definition of genocide.109
forced assimilation by moderate coercion â involving for example, prohibition of the opening of schools for teaching the language of the group concerned, of the publication of newspapers printed in that language, of the use of that language in official documents and in court, and so on. [In contrast, cultural genocide] was a policy which by drastic methods, aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the cultural, moral and religious life of a group of [humans].110
The UN Draft Declaration of the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide in 1948 thus âleft the protection of minorities from forced assimilation to the system of protection of minorities (whose focus is on human rights and not genocide) âagainst a policy of forced assimilation employing relatively moderate methods.ââ111 The contrast between genocidal mass murder and cultural dismantlement led to rejection of including cultural genocide in the Convention.112
Cultural genocide is thus not a genocidal act under the Genocide Convention and remains a non-legal concept. It is not lex lata, the law as it exists, and is not even lex ferrenda, the law as it should be,113 as international courts do not recognize it and most criminal law specialists concur in that non-recognition. Some Western academics note that âcultural genocide is typically considered outside the scope of the Convention,â but argue that it should not be or argue
If a case against a state were brought to the ICJ or to the institution that deals with charges of genocide against individuals, the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming cultural, not physical, genocide, it would likely not be heard. If it involved Xinjiang and were heard, it could easily be shown that Uyghur cultural practices remain intact and disprove assertions like one a US scholar made that âThe policy in Xinjiang has been one of total homogenization and assimilation,â intended âto essentially erase all vestiges of Uyghur culture.â115
First to be examined here is how genocide is interpreted in the international law in which the concept is embedded and how the concept is misused for political ends. We then focus on misappropriation of the concept in Uyghur émigré and Western narratives about claimed genocidal preventions of births and transfer of children of detained parents. Many assertions of Xinjiang genocide are made by those who Britons refer to as âbarracks room lawyersâ â persons who give authoritative-sounding opinions on subjects in which they are not qualified, especially legal matters. Some are self-promoting politicians or propagandizing journalists, but there are also academics like those US economist Paul Krugman describes: âpeople who are genuinely brilliant in some areas but utter fools in other domains.â116
As will be shown, several Anglosphere Xinjiang specialists take up almost every claim of the Uyghur émigrés and their US government sponsors, no matter how fantastic. They do so without interrogating and verifying the assertions and without having a grounding in legal and social science concepts relevant to the claims, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, settler colonialism, and forced labor. They do what some academics have done in other fields: defend those with whom they have an affinity through their studies, even in the face of evidence that Uyghur émigré groups promote only speculations and flawed perspectives.
An example of how that works concerns UK poet Craig Raineâs 2006 book exonerating poet and playwright TS Eliot of charges that he was anti-Jewish and a misogynist,117 traits most Eliot biographers have discerned. The leading
Another example is Eugene Genovese, a leading US historian of slavery. In his first book, in 1974, he applied Marxian theorist Antonio Gramsciâs concept of hegemony to argue that it was slaveowner paternalism that enabled slavery to persist.120 By the late 1980s, Genovese was a rightwing defender of the slaveholders. In his last book, in 2017, he confirmed that he liked the slaveowners, who he saw as champions of pre-modern ideals. Genovese admired slaveholder ideologists as âthoughtful, educated critics of the 19th C. society and moral orderâ who had a âprincipled stanceâ against industrial capitalism. He did so despite historians situating US slavery within the global industrial capitalist economy â121 slave labor fueled Manchesterâs 108 cotton mills by 1853 â even while recognizing that slavery and capitalism were âconnected but different systems of exploiting labor and generating profit.â122
Western politicians, media, NGOâs and Xinjiang specialists attach themselves to Uyghur émigré groups and buy into what they offer, while ignoring that the émigrésâ unverified assertions indicate a political stratagem to cry genocide and mobilize support for separatism. In accepting émigré claims, their supporters commit logical fallacies, such as the fallacy of composition,
The part that their supporters confuse with the whole is the Uyghur émigrés themselves. Many Western Xinjiang specialists wrongly assume that émigrés represent their ethnic group. Uyghurs, however, are politically-diverse. Western state-backed rightwing émigré groups mainly represent separatist Uyghurs. A survey has indicated that it is unlikely that most Uyghurs are separatists.124 Around 2019, it was said there were some 500,000 Uyghurs among the 622,500 minorities and 1.6m total CCP membership in Xinjiang,125 numbers likely to have risen in recent years.
Like the Uyghur émigrés, many political leaders and forces have no basis for asserting that most people agree with them. Thus, Trump said in 2024 that âMany Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state,â but a survey showed that 82% of Canadians would not like to become the 51st state and 13% said they would.126 In Canada, the pro-secession Parti Quebecois asserts most Quebecois support independence, but in mid-2025, an Ekos poll found that only 26% did, down from 37% only a few months earlier, in part because US threats to Canada united Quebecois with other Canadians. The poll also found that 86% of Quebecois were proud to be Canadian. The pollsters stated that âQuebecers have largely abandoned their aspirations to leave Canada.â127
Rather than Canadians wanting to join the US or most Quebecois wanting to leave Canada, about an equal proportion of Americans want secession. A 2024 poll showed that 23% of Americans support the state they live in seceding from the US. In the largest states, New York, California and Texas, the proportions were 28, 29, and 31%.128 Within some states, such as Illinois, many Republican-supporting counties have movements to secede from the Chicago
Even if some Uyghurs were shown to favor separatism, it would likely reflect what Nathaniel Hawthorne observed, that âYou can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.â130 As with Americans who favor secession, most Uyghurs who back separation would likely back away from it were it to become a real prospect, because Xinjiang, like the downstate Illinois counties, would lose vital financial support, in the Xinjiang case from a large and rising China. The region might well suffer the same decline that some of Xinjiangâs Central Asian neighbors did after their reluctant exit from the former Soviet Union.
Another logical lapse is the âTexas sharpshooter fallacy,â a confirmation bias that selectively chooses and interprets information to fit pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. The fallacy, also known as the multiple comparisons fallacy, seeks to account for the likelihood of finding some subset in large data that has some common property, caused by a factor other than its actual cause. It is an epidemiological metaphor about a Texan who shoots at the side of an old barn, then draws a shooting target centered on the tightest cluster of shots. He thereby âprovesâ that he has hit the bullseye many times and is a sharpshooter.
The fallacy often occurs when there is a large amount of data, but a focus on only a small subset of it. A Swedish study of people living near high-voltage power lines sought to determine whether the lines impaired their health. It looked for increases in rates of over 800 ailments and found that one of those 800 risk ratios, childhood leukemia, was four times higher among those who lived closest to the power lines. The studyâs publication discussed only that one positive link. Testing for over 800 ailments, however, created a high probability, by chance alone, that at least one ailment would statistically correlate with living distance from power lines. Such ârandom noiseâ is expected in any sizeable set: statisticians expect 5% of a sample to be statistically elevated and 5% to be statistically decreased. An epidemiologist noted, âBy statistics alone, itâs very possible that there will be a number of cancers in one block and none in the next 10 blocks. And if one wants to try to identify sources of cancer, what one must do is study many, many children.â Later studies found no power lines/childhood leukemia link.131
A 2023 field report on a village in Yecheng County, Kashgar prefecture, found that it had 1,089 people in 252 households. Yecheng County was first among Xinjiangâs 99 counties in the number of terrorist incidents before 2017,134 so it could be expected to have had a particularly high number of people âdetained;â yet only 22 or 8.7% of the households had someone who had gone to one of the âvocational education and training centersâ (
The unconfirmed guesses about the eight Xinjiang villages are an analog of the cluster of bullet holes made by the imagined Texas sharpshooter. Also, in the huge set of data about âplaces of detentionâ and workplaces in Xinjiang, there would be, by chance alone, some instances where there was the appearance â but not necessarily the reality â of arbitrariness or illegality. The most
Western sources also maintain âgenocideâ as a non-falsifiable proposition, no matter how fanciful émigré assertions about it. Anyone who challenges the Western mainstream discourse is labelled a âpro-Chinaâ âtankie,â âcampist,â or âgenocide denier.â137 In 2021, Bill Yee (
The claim that Yee is a âgenocide denierâ is analogous to the charge that Jewish critics of Israelâs policies are âself-hating Jews.â That rhetorical trick has been characterized by British scholar of anti-Semitism Antony Lerman as âan entirely bogus concept.â It is used to stifle legitimate discussion and results in the replacement of serious study of anti-Semitism by âpeople lacking any serious expertise in the subject, whose principal aim is to excoriate Jewish critics of Israel and to promote the âanti-Zionism = anti-Semitismâ equation.â139
University of Birmingham doctoral candidate Rong Wei sought, in 2021, to study the UKâs âanti-China lobby.â Rong had worked with international relations scholar Peter Burnham and emphasized the primacy of domestic politics in her research on the UKâs China policy. The anti-China lobbyâs leaders, mainly grouped in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and the China Research Group of Tory MPâs, sought to block her funding. One of its leaders is writer and China regime-change advocate Benedict Rogers. Another is former Conservative Party Chairman Sir Iain Duncan Smith who, in 2025,
Such ideas are the stuff of the émigré myths that pervade the discourse of âUyghur genocide.â The discourse is highly consequential in the Anglosphere and Western Europe by reinforcing anti-China sentiment and anti-Chinese racism. The result has been Western policies that include sanctions that have harmed Xinjiangâs development, but especially the welfare of the very Uyghurs that Western politicians and other supporters of the émigrés claim to be saving.
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Gideon Rachman, âXiâs China and the Rise of the âGlobal West,ââ Financial Times (FT), Oct. 25, 2022.
Karl Popper, âHow I See Philosophy,â in Charles Bontempo and S. Jack Odell (eds.), The Owl of Minerva (New York: McGrawHill, 1975): 41â55.
Alexander L. Hinton, âCritical Genocide Studies,â Genocide Studies and Prevention (GSP) 7:1 (2012): 4â15.
Alex Lo, âWhy the US Should Recognize Pakistanâs Bangladesh Genocide â For Its Own Complicity,â SCMP, Nov. 3, 2022.
Alain Brossat and Juan Alberto Ruiz Casado, Culture of Enmity: The Discursive Struggle for Taiwan in the Making of the New Cold War (Berlin: Springer, 2023): 91.
Janan Ganesh, âA Republican-Led America Would Not Shrink from the World,â FT, February 8, 2023.
Lo Kinling, âStephen Roach on How Beijing Can Right Its Economic Course and the USâ Big China âBlunder,ââ SCMP, July 15, 2024.
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Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022 [1871]): 71.
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Sonia Phalnikar, âWhat Exactly is Genocide?â Deutsche Welle (DW), Apr. 14, 2022.
Avi Ackermann, âIsrael and the âCrime of Crimes,ââ Coda Story, Jan. 30, 2024, www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/dirk-moses-israel-genocide-icj/.
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Antonio Cassese, International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 246.
âInternational Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide,â 78 UNTS: 277, 102 Stats. 3045, Dec. 1, 1948.
âCrimes Against Humanity and an Obtuse Indian Stance,â The Hindu, Dec. 20, 2024.
Linda Kinstler, âThe Bitter Fight Over the Meaning of âGenocide,ââ NYT, Aug. 20, 2024.
International Center for Transitional Justice, âThe Applicability of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide to Events Which Occurred in the Early Twentieth Century,â 2002: 11, https://www.groong.com/ICTJ-analysis.html.
See, e.g. Steven R. Ratner, âLabeling Mass Atrocity: Does and Should International Criminal Law Rank Evil?â Wayne Law Review 54:2 (2008): 569â575.
Ben Kiernan, et al, Cambridge World History of Genocide: Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914â2020 v. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
âPopulation: Death Rate: Xinjiang,â CEIC, 2022, www.ceicdagta.com/en/china/population-death-by-region/cn-population-deathj-rate-xinjiang.
Zeina Jamaluddine, et al, âTraumatic Injury Mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a CaptureâRecapture Analysis,â Lancet 405:10477 (Feb. 8, 2025): 469â477.
Edward Wong and Chris Buckley, âU.S. Says Chinaâs Repression of Uighurs Is âGenocideâ,â NYT, Jan. 19, 2021.
âEuropean Parliament Resolution on the Human Rights Situation in Xinjiang, Including the Xinjiang Police Files,â European Parliament, June 8, 2022, www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/RC-9-2022-0310_EN.html.
â18 US Code 1091: Genocide,â Cornell Legal Information Institute, 2024, www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1091.
Charles Johnson, âTen Years on, Yezidi Cases Expose a Lack of Corporate Accountability in US Genocide Law,â Atlantic Council, July 24, 2024.
Alexander Laban Hinton, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (New York: New York University Press, 2021).
Edward Chermerinsky, âWhen Should University Administrators Speak?: Personal Reflections,â Baylor Law Review 76:1 (2024): 49â62.
âMob Chased Brooklyn Woman After Mistaking Her for Protestor at Speech by Israeli Security Minister,â AP, Apr. 29, 2025.
Stephen Zunes, âBy Rejecting Evidence of Genocide in Gaza, the US Is Following a Familiar Pattern,â New Lines Magazine, Feb. 14, 2025, https://newlinesmag.com/essays/by-rejecting-evidence-of-genocide-in-gaza-the-us-is-following-a-familiar-pattern/.
âThe Guardian View on Israel and Gaza: Trump Can Stop this Horror,â Guardian, May 13, 2025.
âSenate Intelligence Committee Chairman Cottonâs Opening Remarks at the Confirmation Hearing Tulsi Gabbard for ODNI,â Tom Cotton Senator, Jan. 30, 2025, www.cotton.senate.gov/news/speeches/senate-intelligence-committee-chairman-cottons-opening-remarks-at-the-confirmation-hearing-tulsi-gabbard-for-odni.
Quoted in Benjamin Ho, âAmerica Takes a Leaf Out of Chinaâs International Relations Playbook,â RSIS, June 5, 2025, https://rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/america-takes-a-leaf-out-of-chinas-international-relations-playbook/.
Hai Hong Ngyuen, âWill Vietnamâs Diplomacy Influence Political Reforms at Home,â Foreign Policy in Focus, May 30, 2025.
David Tobin, âGenocidal Processes: Social Death in Xinjiang,â Ethnic & Racial Studies 45: 16 (2022): 93â121; Bonnie Girard, âAssimilation: Chinaâs Failed Strategy in Xinjiang,â The Diplomat, June 30, 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/assimilation-chinas-failed-strategy-in-xinjiang/.
Ciara Finnegan, âThe Uyghur Minority in China: A Case Study of Cultural Genocide, Minority Rights and the Insufficiency of the International Legal Framework in Preventing State-Imposed Extinction,â Laws 9:1 (2021): 1â20, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/9/1/1.
Michael Gaubeca, âCan Genocides Be Prevented in This [sic] 21st Centuryâ: 72â73, masterâs thesis, Harvard University, 2022, https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37371426.
Josh Chin and Niharika Mandhana, âChina Steals Language and Home Life from Tibetan Kids as Young as 4,â Wall Street Journal (WSJ), June 29, 2025.
Corman Kenny and Travis Farr, âThe International Criminal Courtâs Opportunity to Correct the Erroneous Interpretation of the Mens Rea for Genocide,â Human Rights Quarterly 46 (2024): 25â66.
Prosecutor v. Krstic, Case No. IT-98-33-T, Judgment 2 August 2001, para. 580.
Kurt Mundorff, âOther Peopleâs Children: a Textual and Contextual Interpretation of the Genocide Convention, Article 2(e),â Harvard International Law Journal 50:1 (2009): 61â127 (122).
Hilly Moodrick-Even Khen, âThe Uyghurs: the Case for Making the Prohibition on Cultural Genocide a Soft Law Norm in International Law,â International Journal of Minority and Group Rights 30 (2023): 76â109.
Elisa Novic, The Concept of Cultural Genocide: an International Law Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016): 25.
See Hojjat Salimi Turkaman, âThe Legal Nature of the Climate Change Regime: Fluctuation between Lex Lata and Lex Ferenda,â Utrecht Journal of International and European Law 38:1 (2023): 1â13.
Bonnie St. Charles, âYouâre on Native Land: The Genocide Convention, Cultural Genocide and the Prevention of Indigenous Land Takings,â Chicago Journal of International Law 21:1 (2020): 227â262; Finnegan, The Uyghur Minority; Khen, The Uyghurs.
Kenton Thibaut, âRepressive Technologies and Ethnic Policy in China: The Case of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia,â Sinosphere 1 (2021): 33â47.
Paul Krugman, âDid the Story of Tesla Ever Make Sense?â NYT, Dec. 30, 2022.
Craig Raine, T. S. Eliot (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Terry Eagleton, âRaineâs Sterile Thunder,â Prospect, March 2007, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/57706/raines-sterile-thunder.
Saul Singer, âWas Eugene OâNeill An Anti-Semite?â Jewish Press, Jan. 22, 2020, www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/was-eugene-oneill-an-anti-semite/2020/01/22/.
Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1974).
Eugene Genovese, The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Amy Murrell Taylor, âIn Praise of Slavers: Swansong of a Historian who Admired the Paternalism of the Antebellum South,â Times Literary Supplement (TLS) 5998, Mar. 16, 2018.
Stephanie McCurry, âThe Plunder of Black Life,â TLS, May 19, 2017; Matthew Stallard, et al, âHow Slavery Made Manchester the Worldâs First Industrial City,â Guardian, Apr. 3, 2023.
Davis, Ruling, Resources: 29.
Tang Wenfang and He Gaochao, âSeparate but Loyal: Ethnicity and Nationalism in Chinaâ (Washington: East-West Center, 2010), www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/separate-loyal-ethnicity-and-nationalism-china.
Wu Huijian, âAre Uyghurs Active in Chinaâs CCP?â Quora, July 16, 2021, www.quora.com/Does-China-force-Uyghur-Han-intermarriage; Liu Xin, â1.6m Party Members of All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang Jointly Promote Local Development,â GT July 2, 2019.
Joe Edwards, âHow Canadians Feel About Becoming â51st US State,ââ Newsweek, Dec. 18, 2024.
Matthew Renfrew, âQuebecers have Largely Abandoned their Aspirations to Leave Canada.â Cultmtl, June 2025, https://cultmtl.com/2025/06/support-for-quebec-sovereignt-independance/.
âUS âBreaking Apartâ with 25 States Ready to Leave,â Newsweek, Apr. 8, 2024.
Patti Waldmeir, âThe Red Counties that Want to Split from Blue Illinoisâ, FT, Mar. 11, 2025.
Quote Fancy, 2024, www.whatshouldireadnext.com/quotes/nathaniel-hawthorne-you-can-get-assent-to#google_vignette.
M. Feychting and A. Ahlbom, âMagnetic Fields and Cancer in Children Residing Near Swedish High-Voltage Power Linesâ. American Journal of Epidemiology 138:7 (1993): 467â481; John Palfreman, âCurrents of Fear,â Frontline, June 13, 1995, https://web.archive.org/web/20160203040412/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/1319.html.
Steve Hsu, âCarl Zha: Xinjiang, Ukraine, and U.S.-China Relations,â Manifold, Apr. 21, 2022, www.manifold1.com/episodes/carl-zha-xinjiang-ukraine-and-u-s-china-relations-10/transcript.
J. Arch Getty, et al, âVictims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: a First Approach Based on Archival Evidence,â American Historical Review 98 (1993): 1017â1049.
Liu Chuyu, âLocal Public Goods Expenditure and Ethnic Conflict: Evidence from China,â Securities Studies 28:4 (2019): 739â772.
Interview, Yecheng County officials, July 12, 2023.
Xiaozhao Yousef Yang and Scott Schieman, âRacial Disparities in Death Rates and Death Incidences in Xinjiang: A Study of Multilevel Ecological Mechanisms,â Science and Medicine 340 (2024), www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953623007621.
See, e.g., Matthew Roberts, âThe War on the Uyghurs: A Conversation with Sean R. Roberts,â Made in China, Oct. 4, 2021. Dan La Botz and Stephen Shalom, âWe Oppose McCarthyism and Apologizing for China,â Foreign Policy in Focus, Aug. 15, 2023.
Graeme Wood, âHorgan Faces Backlash for Genocide-Denying Adviser,â BIV, Apr. 8, 2021, www.biv.com/news/economy-law-politics/horgan-faces-backlash-genocide-denying-adviser-8263881.
Antony Lerman âJews Attacking Jews,â Haaretz, Sept. 12, 2008, www.haaretz.com/2008-09-12/ty-article/jews-attacking-jews/0000017f-e1ae-d75c-a7ff-fdaff4a90000.
Rong Wei and Peter Burnham, âTime for a UK Rethink on China Relations?â UK in a Changing Europe, Jan. 21, 2021, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/time-for-a-uk-re-think-on-china-relations/; âUKâs Anti-China Lobby is Facing âNightmareââ Fridayeveryday, Nov. 30, 2021, https://fridayeveryday.com/uks-anti-china-lobby-is-facing-nightmare/; âIDS Rocket for Military Chief Over Beijing Trip,â Daily Telegraph (DT), Apr. 11, 2025; Iain Duncan Smith, âWe Canât Restore our Nation to Strength Without Confronting China,â Telegraph Online, Apr. 13, 2025.