The Chinese Communist Party is committing serious, horrifying crimes against its Uighur Muslim population. The world has known about what happens in China’s Xinjiang region for years, but viral drone footage released this weekend, taken several months back, serves as a reminder that a genocide is occurring in one of the most powerful countries in the world and that China has never had to answer for it.
In the footage, which was originally leaked in September 2019, Uighur Muslims are seen bound and blindfolded, waiting to be loaded onto train cars:
Uighurs sitting, bound and blindfolded, waiting to be loaded onto train cars and taken — somewhere.
Drone footage from an unknown hero in China.#Uighur pic.twitter.com/l9CTfyM2iT
— PariahDog1312?⚖️ (@PDog119) July 15, 2020
This, after a report last month by the Associated Press that detailed the horrific measures Chinese officials are using to curb the population of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Women are being forcibly injected with intrauterine devices, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to undergo abortions. Muslim parents with more than three children must pay enormous fines or have their children ripped away from them. Those that try to hide their children from the state are sent to concentration camps, where Muslim men and women are brutalized and brainwashed.
Yet China denies it all, and the CCP knows there will be no serious repercussions. In an interview with the BBC this weekend, China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, refused to acknowledge the drone footage and insisted that Uighurs live in peace and harmony. Liu also denied the AP report that China is sterilizing Uighur women, claiming that the birth rate in Xinjiang has increased over the past few years:
After much dithering from the Chinese amb, BBC presenter cuts right through it:
“Can I ask you why people are shaven and blindfolded and being loaded on to trains there?” pic.twitter.com/6AkRbGu1k0
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) July 20, 2020
These are lies, of course, and the BBC’s Andrew Marr was right to confront Liu. So, too, was U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab when he accused China of “gross and egregious” human rights abuses, the likes of which we haven’t “seen for a long time.”
But now it’s time to actually do something about this and hold China accountable. CCP spokespersons such as Liu will continue to deny, dismiss, and lie about China’s crimes as long as our criticism remains just that: criticism.
What we need now is action. Raab has suggested additional sanctions. That would be a good place to start. China cannot continue to benefit financially while it imprisons and tortures innocent men and women. And if that means giving up some of the perks we currently enjoy as Western consumers, such as low prices, then that’s what must be done.
That includes U.S. companies that continue to partner with China whilst turning a blind eye to its human rights abuses. They are complicit in China’s crimes. It’s time for our companies to give China an ultimatum: agree to an international investigation, or we’ll leave. And it is precisely the companies that have the most invested in China that need to show the greatest amount of moral courage.
World leaders must also be adamant about publicly confronting China over its treatment of the Uighurs. The CCP needs to know that this is a topic that will not be dropped, no matter how many times its spokespersons change the subject. At every press conference, every public interview — ask China about this drone footage, about the AP report, about the countless other intelligence reports confirming China’s crimes.
Unfortunately, this seems more like wishful thinking than an actual strategy. Few U.S. companies have the fortitude to do what’s right if it means suffering a financial loss, and few consumers want to admit that our economic relationship with China has human costs. Even fewer global leaders are brave enough to lead like Winston Churchill and confront evil over and over again until the rest of the world is forced to follow suit. But that’s what must happen, and before it’s too late.
