The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) held a conference Wednesday to review Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang and demand an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
VOC President Andrew Bremberg said:
We believe in putting the testimony of witnesses front and center whenever discussing the legacy of communism. The efforts of these brave souls provide a priceless resource for us, and for future generations. The witnesses and their stories remind us that the atrocities being committed by communist regimes, today and in the past, are not just words on a page
Speakers at the VOC conference included a survivor of the infamous Xinjiang concentration camps who has adopted the English name Joseph. He described his ordeal in detail, from an early-morning arrest by Chinese security officers and the brief pretense that he would be attending a “training center” for vocational skills, to the brutal reality of an overcrowded, unsanitary prison camp — where 26 men were crammed into a single bed and forced to share a single toilet.
The camp experience included constant surveillance, bizarre medical attention, and both physical and psychological torment. The survivor said inmates were constantly given mysterious oral medicines and injections by their Chinese captors. He thought much of the camp’s abuse was meant to soften inmates up for political indoctrination and programming.
Joseph mentioned encountering the “tiger chair,” a torture instrument described by numerous survivors of the Xinjiang concentration camps and denounced by human rights organization. The tiger chair is a rigid, uncomfortable metal chair that prisoners are strapped into for obscene lengths of time, causing unbearable pain and swelling in the legs and buttocks. It is reportedly favored by the Chinese Communists because it does not leave visible marks of torment on the victims once the swelling fades.
Citing the U.S. State Department’s conclusion – reached on the final day of the Trump administration, with input from VOC and other human rights monitors – that China’s repression of the Uyghurs met the definition of genocide, the conference called for an impartial and unfettered investigation of “mass extrajudicial incarceration, forced sterilization and abortion, forced labor, family separation and more” in Xinjiang.
China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday sneered at President Joe Biden for describing Russia’s attack on Ukraine as “genocide,” finding the charge to be as absurd and hypocritical as the (very accurate) charges of genocide against China for its abuse of the Uyghur Muslims.
“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide half a world away,” Biden said during a speech on energy prices in Iowa on Tuesday, apparently referring to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, not Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. The White House sought to backpedal from the legal and policy ramifications of Biden’s remarks, while the president stood by his use of the term.
The Global Times accused Biden of thoughtlessly launching a global controversy to distract from his low poll numbers and the looming midterm election disaster for his party, using Russia as a “scapegoat” to distract from his inability to address the energy crisis and “sluggish U.S. economy.”
The Chinese Communist paper then trotted out its favorite talking points about how all human rights allegations against China and its allies are just hypocritical Western gambits to keep rising powers down:
From a global perspective, the accusation of “genocide” made by the US has long lost its strength to create a storm, as Washington has thrown the term around the world every once in a while. Right before the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China was accused of “committing genocide” in its Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The list is even longer. Beyond the Holocaust, the US State Department has officially concluded that genocide was committed eight times. If individual politicians’ remarks are also taken into account, the frequency of the term being raised is much higher. The US has overly diluted the meaning of the word.
“Genocide” has become a tool, which the US has been taking advantage of in pursuing its political goals. For ordinary people, it may have become a norm to hear the US talking about it out loud. Few would take it seriously anymore. The US has never been the avatar of justice, nor is its relevant wording sacred.
This was followed by predictably dredging up the mournful history of the American Indian, as if horrors perpetrated over 200 years ago mean no one in the United States can fairly criticize China for brutally enslaving an entire people right now. One might also point out that disciples of world-class homicidal maniac Mao Zedong are in no position to harp on anyone else’s grim chapters of history.
President Biden’s off-the-cuff allegation of Russian genocide has plenty of critics outside the Chinese Communist Party, who note that Russia’s conduct can be horrifying without meeting the strict legal definition of genocide, and fear careless use of the genocide charge could diminish its power against those who deserve to be so accused. China acted quickly to use Biden’s remarks for exactly that purpose.
Biden has not yet personally called the genocide of the Uyghur people in East Turkistan a genocide, though officials in his administration have.
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