I already know I’m going to regret engaging any further.

Persecution of Uyghurs in China

Since 2014, the government of the People’s Republic of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.

In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo,[2] the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as “vocational education and training centers”, in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.[3][4] China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and some detainees were transferred to the penal system, while others were transferred to forced labor and factory work programs.[5][6]

In addition to mass detention, government policies have included suppression of Uyghur religious practices,[7] political indoctrination,[8] forced sterilization,[9] forced contraception,[10][11] and forced abortion.[12][13] An estimated 16,000 mosques have been razed or damaged,[2] and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.[14][15] Chinese government statistics reported that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%.[9] In the same period, the national birth rate decreased by 9.7%.[16] According to CNN, Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization.[17] Birth rates in Xinjiang fell a further 24% in 2019, compared to a nationwide decrease of 4.2%.[9]

Allegations of genocide of Ukrainians in the Russo-Ukrainian war

According to multiple national governments,[20][21][22] international organisations,[23] independent experts and media outlets,[24][25][26][27] Russia and its ally Belarus are committing genocide against the Ukrainian people as part of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, including the Russian annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and especially in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory. Scholars and commentators including Eugene Finkel,[28][29] Timothy Snyder[30] and Gregory Stanton;[31] and legal experts such as Otto Luchterhandt[32] and Zakhar Tropin,[33] have made claims of varying degrees of certainty that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. A comprehensive report by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights[34] concluded that there exists a “very serious risk of genocide” in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Genocide scholar Alexander Hinton stated on 13 April 2022 that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s genocidal rhetoric would have to be linked to the war crimes in order to establish genocidal intent, but it is “quite likely” that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine.[31] War crimes committed by Russian forces include the Bucha massacre, sexual violence,[35] extrajudicial killings, torture, looting,[36] and the establishment of “filtration camps” to facilitate the large-scale deportation of Ukrainians to Russia.

On 17 March 2023, following an investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[37] According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, over 307,000 children were transferred to Russia from 24 February to 18 June 2022, alone.[38] In April 2023, the Council of Europe deemed the forced transfers of children as constituting an act of genocide with an overwhelming majority of 87 in favour of the resolution to 1 against and 1 abstaining.[39]