2L Nyle Hussain will present on his Comment topic: Genocide in Xinjiang

The Chinese government has been engaging in a brutal crackdown of its Muslim citizens in the western province of Xinjiang. Upwards of 2 million Muslims, mostly members of the Uighur ethnic group, have been detained in concentration camps, which the Chinese government calls “vocational training centers.” China’s Communist Party hopes to efface the Muslim identity of the region, transforming its inhabitants into its version of ‘good’ Chinese citizens. Some journalists have described the atrocities as genocide, while the argument of the activists that once dubbed China’s longstanding discriminatory policies against the Uighurs as “cultural genocide” has gained renewed attention. However, this comment aims to demonstrate that the current understanding of the Genocide Convention does not encompass the severe repression currently being visited upon the Muslims in Xinjiang. Institutions applying the Convention must stop privileging the biological dimension of genocide over the cultural. Not only would this accord with the concept of the term (destruction of a group qua group), but it is also necessary to give meaning to the final two actus reus elements enumerated in the Convention itself.