China executes ‘slow-motion genocide’ in Tibet, Xinjiang, conference told

TOKYO — Dorjee Tseten is 41 but has never set foot on his home country’s soil.

“My family escaped Tibet, but 1.2 million Tibetans have lost their lives over the last seven decades through military occupation, famine and while escaping,” said Mr. Tseten, a member of Tibet’s parliament in exile. “Every family has this kind of story.”

It hits him hardest when he views TV news. “When I hear of the killing of innocents, it reminds me of what is happening in Tibet,” he said.

Bloody conflicts raging in the Gaza Strip, Sudan and Ukraine generate loose talk of genocide. For those at the International Religious Freedom Summit Asia in Tokyo last week, the discussion was precise and the target clear in what many said was the Chinese communist regime’s quiet, de facto policy of genocide in Tibet and Xinjiang.

“The term ‘genocide’ is sometimes misused to get attention,” said Robert Rehak, the Czech Republic’s special envoy for Holocaust issues, interfaith dialogue and freedom of religion. “It may not be the mass killing of a huge number of people, but if the long-term aim is to end a nation, you can call it genocide.”

Conference sponsors included Freedom House, the Family Research Council and The Washington Times Foundation.

Though Beijing does not operate death camps or fill mass graves, the central government’s policy toward the people of the two regions represents “slow-motion” genocide, experts say.

“Not every massacre or war crime is a genocide,” said Marco Respinti, director of Bitter Winter, a magazine focused on religious liberty and human rights. “To have a genocide, you have to have the intention to destroy an entire portion of humankind, you have to make a project to do that and you have to make tools you need.”

Chinese leaders angrily denounce the charge of genocide. They are particularly furious that the Trump administration and then the Biden administration formally declared Beijing’s policies against the local ethnic Muslim Uyghur population of Xinjiang a genocide.

“There has never been so-called genocide, forced labor or religious oppression in Xinjiang,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021. “Such inflammatory accusations are fabricated out of ignorance and prejudice. They are simply malicious and politically driven hype and couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Long, slow process

Neither a sudden event nor a shock policy, genocide usually builds over a long period.

Xinjiang, which many Uyghurs call Eastern Turkestan, was occupied by China in 1949. Tibet was annexed by force in 1950. Natives of both say the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s policies of cultural liquidation have accelerated since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013.

In 2014, Mr. Xi was said to have expressed surprise and unhappiness on a visit to the Xinjiang city of Kahsgard.

“Some reports said he asked, ‘Why are Uyghurs still Uyghurs?’” said Omer Kanat, president of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. “He criticized officials … and they decided to forcefully assimilate the Uyghur people.”

Systemic assimilation policies “turned into genocide in 2017,” Mr. Kanat said.

“One of the most current, pressing human rights issues” facing Tibetans – forced indoctrination of children – began to be enforced after 2016, Mr. Tseten said.

“The CCP is conducting three genocides,” said Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during the Trump administration. He added a Han Chinese group to the Tibetans and Uyghurs.

Targeting the faithful

China’s critics say that, just as the Nazis exterminated followers of Judaism, Beijing is targeting those with strong religious identities: Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur adherents of Islam, and Chinese Falun Gong, which combines Buddhist and Taoist teachings with breathing and meditation exercises.

“It makes sense that authoritarian regimes fear faith,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, co-chair of the Tokyo religious freedom summit. “What they need is control of their populations, but if people have acquired convictions, they are much harder to control.”

According to Chinese regulations, “all religious venues should have permissions, all [religious] teachers should have certifications and have ‘Xi Jinping ideology,’” said Tsewang Gyalpo Arya, the Dalai Lama’s representative for Japan and East Asia. “Where is the religion?”

Ethnic identities and religious practices are replaced with uniform identities and party-approved practices. Among the worst abuses are torture, disappearances and organ harvesting. More mainstream methods of control include heavy police presence and mass detentions in camps.

“The purpose of the camps is to break lineage, roots and connections to origins — to eliminate the Uyghurs as an ethnic identity in China,” said Mr. Kanat. He estimates that “tens of thousands” from all walks of life have been incarcerated.

Since 2016, Tibetan children as young as 5 have been wrenched from their families and placed in “colonial boarding schools.”

“When children come out, their connection with their families has changed,” said Mr. Tseten. “They can’t speak Tibetan, they forget their traditions and are not able to communicate with their families.

“Some of them even become critical of their grandparents,” he said. “They ask them, ‘Why don’t you know Chinese? Why are you not like other Chinese?’”

Technology and repression

To prevent free expression and free assembly, “authoritarian regimes have technologies they only dreamed of in the past,” Mr. Brownback said.

A security web that synchronizes high technologies, from CCTV camera networks to spyware embedded in personal digital devices, allows for ubiquitous and never-resting artificial intelligence monitoring of the population.

“Families cannot communicate with each other,” said Ilham Mahmut, chairman of Japan’s Uyghur Cultural Center. “People got skeptical about each other, even within the family.”

He said he speaks from personal experience. “The last time I communicated with my mother was in April 2017. She said, ‘Please don’t call me. I’ll call you if something happens.’”

Along with the human cost comes repression in the physical space. Structures central to religious culture, notably mosques and monasteries, are being destroyed or repurposed.

Speakers at the Tokyo gathering urged citizens to demand action from their governments. The U.N. Human Rights Office warned in 2022 that China may be committing crimes against humanity. The Dutch government has joined the U.S. in labeling Beijing’s policies genocidal.

Other countries need to add pressure, particularly from inside China’s region. “We’ve got to have strong Asian democracies stand up,” Mr. Brownback said.

Mr. Respinti said those who plan and implement the genocidal policies should be held to account, but the clock is ticking.

“In 10 or 20 or 30 years, you won’t have identifiable religious or ethnic groups, and it will be ‘mission accomplished,’” he said. “When they can’t practice their religion or can’t speak Tibetan or Uyghur or do not understand it, when it is just the standardized language and culture of China, what’s left?”

Mr. Tseten, born overseas, said he dreams of a Tibetan homeland he has never seen.

“I know where my village is and what it looks like. I live with the memory of Tibet through my parents and grandparents,” he said. “Deep down, I feel one day I will go, when the people in my village and across Tibet will be free from fear to practice what they want, to continue to do what their forefathers have done.”