3 yıl önce

ICC rejects Uighur calls to investigate China for possible genocide

International Criminal Court says it is unable to act because alleged acts happened in China, which is not a signatory to the global court. Meanwhile, a US-based think-tank says over 570,000 Uighurs are involved in coerced labour in the area.

Reuters

A police officer takes his position by the road near what is officially called a vocational centre in Yining in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China on September 4, 2018.

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors have rejected calls by exiled Uighurs to investigate China for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The Uighurs handed a huge dossier of "evidence" to the court in July accusing China of locking more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in re-education camps and of forcibly sterilising women.

But the office of prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Monday it was unable to act because the alleged acts happened on the territory of China, which is not a signatory to The Hague-based ICC.

In its annual report, Bensouda's office said "this precondition for the exercise of the court's territorial jurisdiction did not appear to be met with respect to the majority of the crimes alleged."

Court told to reconsider decision

There was also "no basis to proceed at this time" on separate claims of forced deportations of Uighurs back to China from Tajikistan and Cambodia, the ICC report said.

The Uighurs had argued that even though the alleged deportations did not happen on Chinese soil, the ICC could act because they happened on Tajik and Cambodian territory, and both of them are ICC members.

Lawyers for the Uighurs had now asked the court to reconsider "on the basis of new facts or evidence", the ICC prosecutor's report said.

China has called the accusations baseless and says the facilities in the northwestern region are job training centres aimed at steering people away from terrorism.

The ICC has no obligation to consider complaints filed to the prosecutor, who can decide independently what cases to submit to judges at the court, set up in 2002 to achieve justice for the world's worst crimes.

Over 570,000 Uighurs involved in coerced cotton labour

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority labourers in the region are being forced into picking cotton by hand through a coercive state labour scheme, a report has said.

A report by Washington-based think tank the Center for Global Policy published on Monday – which referenced online government documents – said that in 2018 three majority-Uighur regions sent at least 570,000 people to pick cotton as part of a state-run coercive labour transfer scheme.

Researchers estimate that the total number involved in coerced cotton-picking – which relies heavily on manual labour – exceeds that figure by "several hundred thousand".

Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is a global hub for the crop, producing over 20 percent of the world's cotton, with the report warning of the "potentially drastic consequences" for global supply chains.

Around a fifth of the yarn used in American comes from the region.

China has strongly denied allegations of forced labour involving Uighurs in the area, and accused the US of wanting to "suppress Xinjiang companies".

SOURCE: AFP