How to qualify the repression which falls on the Uyghurs, in the Chinese province of Xinjiang? In a live interview on the Instagram accounts of 20 minutes and from TF1 on January 12, Jean-Luc Mélenchon dismissed the terms “genocide” and “cultural genocide”.
Describing in the preamble China as “a demanding partner” and as “the first productive power in the world”, the presidential candidate LFI said that he did not want a “cold war” with this country, while recalling that his “conception of public freedom and pluralism does not seem to be that of the Chinese leaders”. “It’s the least we can say,” he added.
Then describing the situation of the Uyghurs, Jean-Luc Mélenchon spoke of “a repression by the Chinese government against Uyghur Islamist organizations”. He thus indicates “not to believe in the thesis of the genocide”: “Those who use it, in my opinion, do us a disservice, because they, in a way, trivialize a word of which they do not seem to perceive all the reach, he elaborated. Genocide is, for example, the methodical organization of the murder of six million Jews. It is the methodical organization of the assassination of 800,000 Rwandans, it is the assassination of the Armenians. »
Jean-Luc Mélenchon also dismisses the term “cultural genocide”, used by some researchers: “Here we come to an even crazier idea where there would be a standard and no society could evolve. That’s good for Monsieur Zemmour but not for me. The presidential candidate also recalled that he is “in solidarity with the battles to expand the freedoms of the Uighurs and ensure that they are not repressed”.
A position on which he is not joined by all the members of LFI: in April, Clémentine Autain had invited to sign a petition calling on France to “recognize the genocide of the Uyghurs in China”. However, the latter, while reiterating its support for the Uyghurs, declared this Thursday to prefer the term “genocidal risk” rather than “genocide”, while the deputies voted almost unanimously on Thursday for a resolution, no binding, condemning the “genocidal character of the systematic political violence as well as the crimes against humanity currently perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs”.
FAKE OFF
Is it fair to summarize the repression falling on the Uighurs to a “repression by the Chinese government against Uighur Islamist organizations”, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon put it? No, unanimously answer the four researchers interviewed by 20 minutes. “There, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is being abused a little bit by Chinese propaganda,” explains Rémi Castets.
The political scientist, specialist in China and lecturer at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne, recalls that “the Chinese government presents the massive ‘re-education’ campaign in Xinjiang as a policy which aims to deradicalize a Uyghur society which is said to be extremist and presents it especially against a fight against radical Islam. Except that there are no mass Islamist organizations in Xinjiang. The only Islamist organizations trying to preach among the Uyghurs are based abroad and they have a very limited impact: the Internet is controlled in China. There were a few imams or neo-fundamentalist activists, but the most reluctant fled, were ousted or imprisoned from the 1990s-2000s. »
Genocide is defined in international law
Ildikó Bellér-Hann, associate professor emeritus at the University of Copenhagen, points out that “intellectuals, civilians, urban and rural, men and women, all have been targeted [par les mesures répressives de Pékin], most of which have nothing to do with Islamist organizations. For her, “the best proof that this repression does not concern Islam is that the ten million Hui (Chinese Muslims) living throughout China have not been targeted in the same way as the Uyghurs. »
How, in this case, to qualify the repressions targeting the Uyghurs? Can we speak of “genocide”, or can this term not be retained, as explained by Jean-Luc Mélenchon? Genocide has been defined in international law since 1948. This Convention establishes “an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. It defines five material elements constituting this crime: “Murder of members of the group”, “serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, “intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence calculated to bring about its physical destruction total or partial”, “measures aimed at preventing births within the group” and finally the “forced transfer of children from the group to another group”. According to this Convention, genocide is therefore “not only the physical elimination of a people”, summarizes Marc Julienne, researcher specializing in China at IFRI.
The researchers interviewed by 20 minutes all agree to recognize violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the province of Xinjiang, where the Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic Muslims live. For political scientist Rémi Castets, it is difficult to use the term genocide as long as it has not been recognized by a court: “Given the current meaning of the notion by the international legal system, it is difficult to my eyes to qualify what is happening as genocide aimed at making the Uyghur people disappear. There is clearly a policy of forced assimilation, of massive violations of fundamental freedoms, potentially linked to the notion of crime against humanity. »
Other researchers, such as the British Joanne Smith Finley, demonstrate in their work that certain events correspond at least to part of the definition of the International Convention. For this Xinjiang specialist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s vision is “restrictive”: “As far as we know, we have not seen dramatic, violent, frequent massacres in Xinjiang. And that’s why some people, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon or some people on the left, and also some lawyers, some jurists, have argued that it cannot be genocide. This is what we call the very restrictive, very strict definition of the legal definition of genocide. »
A “slow and painful form of genocide”, according to a researcher
“What we don’t see [au Xinjiang], this is the type of very visible massacre that we have seen in Rwanda and in other places, she continues. What we see in Xinjiang is much slower. But it is no less a genocide because it is slow. It is a modern, high-tech, slow and painful form of genocide. »
In December 2021, an informal tribunal based in London recognized – but could not prosecute – “crimes against humanity” and argued that there was evidence for genocide. To conclude irrefutably to a “genocide”, it would be necessary “to carry out investigations with independent experts, mandated by the UN, and that China is totally opposed to it”, advances Marc Julienne.
Uyghur Tribunal Delivery of Judgment: https://t.co/RA5ZXicEYi
— Uyghur Court (@TribunalUyghur) December 9, 2021
Finally, what about the term “cultural genocide”, here also dismissed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon? Rémi Castets recalls that this “has not yet been the subject of an established legal definition”. Joanne Finley Smith appropriates this term, on which she has been working since 2016: “The Chinese state is taking systematic measures and implementing systematic policies to erase the Uighur language, to erase the traces of Uighur history in the territory from Xinjiang of the Uighur homeland, to obliterate shrines and damage and desecrate Sufi shrines. »
She highlights “destruction” or “profanation” of mosques: “I photographed neighborhood mosques in Kashgar in 2018 which had been transformed into cafe bars and they were selling alcohol in these cafes. I went to the biggest, most important mosque in Kashgar in 2018, Id Kah Mosque, and it had been turned into a museum. So many elements which point, according to this researcher, towards a forced transformation of the Uyghur culture.