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Belgian parliament halts China Uyghur 'genocide' debate after DDoS

theregister.com

Why is genocide in quotes?

This is an Uighur genocide. It shouldn't be in quotes.

Nowhere have I seen evidence that Uighurs are actually being systematically put to death. Rather, they're being incarcerated and their cultural and social structures systematically dismembered. But the use of the term genocide as inclusive of cultural annihilation is a recent development. This is proven by the fact that Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term and diligently worked after WWII to construct international legal frameworks prohibiting genocide, always lamented that the international community deliberately rejected his argument that genocide should encompass cultural destruction. That was a bridge too far for Western powers and morality.

Now, maybe times are changing and some nations and groups are adopting the broader definition. But that is nonetheless a significant change arguably worthy of air quotes. It's certainly not a definition China ever signed onto; not even perfunctorily. However disingenuous, one can understand China bristling against such accusations and taking offense at people equivocating their domestic policies with, e.g, the butchering of Rwandan Tutsi. If the liberal anti-colonialism/anti-imperialism crowd weren't so incoherent and hypocritical they'd see the double standard for what it is.

Not everything has to be adorned with the label genocide, fascist, or some label du jour to be wrong and criticized. Attempts to label Mao's and Stalin's purges as genocide have always fallen flat and yet in the West few question the physical and moral enormity of those tragedies.

Maybe you could have a look at this independent report that looks at China's actions and evaluates them in the context of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

[0] https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas-Brea...

There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction" in some parts. That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction. See, e.g., Elisa Novic, "physical-biological or socio-cultural 'destruction' in genocide? Unravelling the legal underpinnings of conflicting interpretations", https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.991208 (available on sci-hub.se).

Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical. Their interpretive slight of hand is made clear here:

> The terms of the definition of genocide must be read in light of the Convention’s primary purpose: the prevention and safeguarding of the existence of a group before, and distinct from, its possible physical destruction. To conclude otherwise would deprive the express terms of any meaning and yield a result that could only be contrary to the object and purpose of the treaty.

That claim is patently wrong and we know that because we know all about the debates held by the original authors and signatories of the 1948 convention. We also know about many subsequent attempts, including by many of those same authors and signatories, to promulgate treaties that extended the meaning of genocide in precisely the way the Newlines Institute paper claims the 1948 convention already achieved.

> There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction". That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction.

There is also a reason that the Convention uses that phrase only as defining the additional required aim in the definition of one out of five separate acts that, when ”committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", constitute genocide, and not in the description of the overall aim which makes any of the five acts consistute genocide.

In fact, the stark contrast between the language of general rule of intent in Article II and the specific rule for the individual act defined in Article II(c) underlines that the intent qualifying the other four acts as genocide is intended to be much broader than the physical destruction called out in II(c).

> Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical.

No, what is ahistorical (and defying the basic structure of the document) is trying to promote the definition of the specific offense in II(c) as applying to and negating the broader language of the common portion of Article II when interpreting the offenses described in II(a), II(b), II(d), and II(e).

The reason "physical" is used as a qualifier in II(c) is exactly because otherwise that element would then become the most ambiguous on the question of whether cultural genocide was included in the definition.

(c) was intended to capture concentration camps designed for "slow death"--i.e. physical destruction--that otherwise wouldn't be captured by the other elements in light of the background presumption that the convention was not inclusive of cultural genocide. Here's a better exposition from the Carnegie Foundation:

> The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide prohibits physical and biological genocide but makes no mention of cultural genocide. This omission was deliberate. Early drafts of the Genocide Convention directly prohibited cultural genocide. As the treaty was finalized, however, a debate emerged over its proper scope. Many state representatives drafting the treaty understood cultural genocide to be analytically distinct, with one arguing forcefully that it defied both logic and proportion “to include in the same convention both mass murders in gas chambers and the closing of libraries.” Others agreed with Lemkin’s broader initial conception that a group could be effectively destroyed by an attack on its cultural institutions, even without the physical/biological obliteration of its members.

> Cultural genocide ultimately was excluded from the final Convention, except for a limited prohibition on the forcible transfer of a group’s children. The drafters acknowledged that the removal of children was physically and biologically destructive but further recognized that indoctrinating children into the customs, language, and values of a foreign group was “tantamount to the destruction of the [child’s] group, whose future depended on that next generation.”

https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/archive/dialogu...

And from a contemporaneous U.S. State Department report of the convention:

> The provision in the Ad Hoc text relating to so-called cultural genocide was deleted by a vote of twenty-five to sixteen (Slav States, China, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Syria) with four abstentions (Afghanistan, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela).

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v01p1/...

The fact that people believe that the convention included cultural genocide is literally historical revision right before our eyes. Maybe it's for the better. I don't know. But the history is indisputable and transparent with even cursory investigation. And this revision of history at the convenience of dominant powers, even when it's for the greater good, was and is still argued to be a centerpiece of cultural destruction in leftist rhetoric. Which, you know, is more than a little ironic. The inherent and obvious tensions at play remains a significant reason to be suspicious of the cogency of cultural genocide as a concept. Where do you draw the lines? Who gets to draw them? Xi Jinping or the latest pop star in Critical Race Theory circles?

Without clear boundaries moral authority is quickly diminished, especially on an international stage where cultural distinctions are most pronounced. A more inclusive document may be more just in theory but much less effective in practice. Indeed, it may very well be the case that China would otherwise be slaughtering Uyghurs en mass this very moment but for its commitment under the 1948 convention. (They may be violating other conventions, but suffice it to say that "genocide" carries particular gravitas, partly because of its historically narrow definition.) Start changing the rules of the game and they're far more likely to walk away from those commitments entirely. I'm more of an idealist than a realist when it comes to politics, but that doesn't mean I ignore the dynamics of hard power.

As clear as the narrow definition is, the international community still stood by during the Rwandan genocide, just as it did for the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and just as it did for the Holocaust. Unfortunately, I'm less well versed in situations where genocide was averted, though that's probably because when it is averted, intervention comes much earlier in the process, before population-scale killing becomes imminent. Muddy the waters further and nations will be even less likely to intervene than they already are.

> Muddy the waters further and nations will be even less likely to intervene than they already are.

Actually, more importantly, muddy the waters further and it also becomes easier for bad actors to justify intervention. Like Russia in Ukraine (to cite just the latest target of its ethnic Russian victimization playbook). Or the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even legitimately good intentions can have disastrous results. At any given moment there are minorities everywhere that need defending, often adjacent to a nation where their group is a majority, and if you give nations moral authority to intervene whenever a minority culture is targeted... who's going to take the blame for the real, physical bloodshed? International law is a very blunt instrument. It's the least capable framework for handling any kind of nuance, let alone culturally relative nuance.

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