Secretary of State Antony Blinken believes the Chinese Communist Party “was” committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, but his top spokesman declined to say whether the Biden administration believes it is ongoing.
The Trump administration declared in one of its final acts that the Chinese government’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other religious minorities in Xinjiang in western China was a genocide, with the Trump State Department likening it to the Nazi Holocaust and contending the genocide was still happening.
Ned Price, the State Department’s top spokesman, was pushed on the Uyghur genocide during a Monday press briefing, when a reporter asked about the “ongoing genocide in China” and whether the Biden administration planned to “impose a cost on China” more than the Trump administration did.
“The secretary has made clear that, in his judgment, genocide was committed against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The PRC also has committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs, who, of course, are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, and that includes imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution,” Price said.
Price added: “I think the question that we are posing to like-minded allies and partners around the world is what collectively can we do not only to impose costs on China for what has transpired but in order to ensure that these, seek to ensure, that these atrocities do not continue going forward.”
The Biden spokesman was then asked a “grammatical question” about “tense” by another reporter, who noted Price had said Blinken determined a genocide “was” committed, asking if it was the Biden administration’s belief that “this is not an ongoing thing” and if “you think it only happened in the past, or is it continuing now?”
The spokesmen kept things in the past tense, notably.
“So, the secretary made clear that in his judgment, genocide was committed against Uyghurs, and we’re using that tense because the secretary was speaking in the context of his confirmation hearings at that moment in time,” Price said.
“The questions of genocide, questions of crimes against humanity, these are always questions that our bureaus are looking at,” he added. “It’s not only the Department of State, but also our interagency partners are looking closely at to form an assessment as to whether these are ongoing. At that moment in time, it was the judgment of Secretary Blinken that genocide had been committed in Xinjiang, just as it was the judgment of Secretary Pompeo, as I understand it, that genocide was committed in Xinjiang.”
POMPEO EQUATES CHINA’S UYGHUR REPRESSION WITH NAZI HOLOCAUST
On former President Donald Trump’s last full day in office, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States believed the Chinese government was conducting an ongoing genocide, saying, “I have determined that the PRC, under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. I believe this genocide is ongoing and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state.”
“That would be my judgment as well,” Blinken, then Biden’s nominee, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the same day when asked about the Trump administration’s genocide designation, adding, “On the Uyghurs, I think we’re very much in agreement. And the forcing of men, women, and children into concentration camps, trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide.”
A few days after Biden’s inauguration, Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for Biden’s White House National Security Council, told the Washington Examiner that “President Biden has called the oppression of the Uighurs a genocide, and he stands against it in the strongest possible terms.”
Price was pressed again Monday on whether what is currently happening in China is a genocide.
“I would make the point that these reviews are always ongoing. It is not that we have to formally initiate a review. Relevant entities — whether it is GCJ [Office of Global Criminal Justice], whether it is EAP [Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs], whether it is our legal adviser’s office — are always evaluating information as we get it, and so, of course, we are closely evaluating, analyzing what may be going on on the ground in Xinjiang, elsewhere in China, elsewhere around the world.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, now Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in her confirmation hearing in late January that “what they are doing there has been referred to as genocide,” adding, “I think the State Department is reviewing that now because all of the procedures were not followed.”
Blinken said later that day that he hadn’t seen her comments, but his “judgment remains that genocide was committed against the Uyghurs, and that hasn’t changed.”
A State Department spokesperson said in mid-February that “as Secretary Blinken and Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield have made clear, genocide was committed against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” Price used the “was” phrasing at least one other time, saying in late February that “we have been very clear that Secretary Blinken has determined that what has taken place in Xinjiang was genocide.”
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Adrian Zenz, who researches Uyghur repression at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, released a 32-page report in the summer that described the Chinese government’s repression campaign, including forced birth control, sterilizations, and abortions. The Chinese Embassy in the U.S. celebrated China’s actions on Twitter in January.
Chinese officials have defended their “vocational education and training centers” as efforts to combat terrorism, but Uyghur survivors have described being insulted, beaten, abused, and raped by guards for their religious beliefs.
