Should the House Condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity Targeting the Uyghurs? (H. Res. 317)

What is H. Res. 317?

(Updated February 5, 2022)

This resolution would express the sense of the House of Representatives that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is responsible for ongoing abuses against the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and that these abuses constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. The resolution would condemn this genocide and these crimes against humanity in the strongest terms. It would also call on the president to take certain actions in concert with their Ambassador to the United Nations aimed at putting an end to these atrocities; and describe the reasons it is expressing this sense of the House.

Specifically, the resolution would urge the president to urge their Ambassador to the United Nations to use the voice, vote, and influence at the United Nations to: 

• Refer the PRC’s genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups to relevant U.N. bodies for investigation; 

• Take action to bring the circumstances of the genocide and crimes against humanity before the U.N. Security Council and to lead efforts to invoke multilateral sanctions in response to these 

• Take all possible actions to bring this genocide and these crimes against humanity to an end and hold the perpetrators of these atrocities accountable under international law.

Further, this resolution would formally explain the reasons for its condemnation of the Chinese government’s genocide and crimes against humanity:

• The CCP has detained and sought to indoctrinate over one million Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.

• Recent data indicate a significant drop in birth rates among Uyghurs due to enforced sterilization, enforced abortion, and more onerous birth quotas for Uyghurs compared to Han Chinese.

• There are credible reports of PRC government campaigns to promote marriages to Uyghurs and Han and to reduce birth rates among Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

• Many Uyghurs reportedly have been assigned to factory employment under conditions that indicate forced labor, and some former detainees have reported food deprivation, beatings, suppression of religious practices, family separation, and sexual abuse.

• This is indicative of a systematic effort to eradicate the ethnic and cultural identity and religious beliefs, and prevent the births of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, and members of religious minority groups.

• The birth rate in the Xinjiang region fell by 24% in 2019 compared to a 4.2% decline nationwide.

• The State Dept. determined the PRC was engaged in a genocide and crimes against humanity on January 19, 2021, during the Trump administration, and then-President-elect Joe Biden’s secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken agreed with that determination during his confirmation the same day.

• Note that the International Court of Justice has stated that all parties to the Genocide Convention to “employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible”.

Argument in favor

The House of Representatives should go on the record as condemning the Chinese Communist Party for its genocide and crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.

Argument opposed

This is a non-binding and symbolic resolution that the House shouldn’t consider because it could anger the Chinese Communist Party, and increase tensions between China and the U.S.

Impact

The House of Representatives; the president and their ambassador to the U.N.; and the Chinese Communist Party.

Cost of H. Res. 317

As a resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives, this legislation would have no budgetary cost.

Additional Info

In-Depth: The bipartisan leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee jointly introduced this legislation to formally condemn the Chinese Communist Party for its genocide and crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups. 

Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said:

“China’s human rights violations against the Uyghur community in Xinjiang are beyond the pale. The international community needs to stand together and condemn the horrific treatment of China’s ethnic minorities, who have undergone mass detention and seen their way of life threatened by the PRC.”

Ranking Member Michael McCaul (R-TX) said:

“The Chinese Communist Party has been waging genocide for years against their own citizens and have even called the Uyghurs ‘malignant tumors.’ We have a moral obligation to confront genocide anywhere in the world, and I am grateful the Chairman has joined me in this vital effort.”

Of Note: The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such” by “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide are prominent examples of genocides. The U.S. also declared that ISIS was engaged in genocide in Iraq and Syria, and also designated genocides in Kosovo and Darfur in recent decades.

Crimes against humanity aren’t codified through an international convention in the same way as genocide, although several international courts have prosecuted the crimes. Such crimes are either part of a government policy or are atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government to murder, exterminate, enslave, deport, imprison, torture, rape, or persecute civilians on political, racial, and religious grounds. In recent years the U.S. has condemned crimes against humanity in Burma (Myanmar).

Human rights experts say that between 800,000 to 2 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been detained indefinitely in reeducation camps since 2017 because the Chinese Communist Party views them as a potential extremist or separatist threat in the Xinjiang region of western China.

Detainees are interned without due process in the camps, where they are subjected to communist propaganda, forced to renounce Islam, and in some cases are beaten and tortured. Detainees are forced to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty to be released. 

Uyghur detainees are also used as forced labor, which several notable multinational companies have been associated with. In July 2020, U.S. Customs & Border Protection seized a 13-ton shipment of hair weaves & beauty accessories shipped from China that was suspected to have been made from human hair taken from Uyghurs in a concentration camp.

Outside of the Xinjiang internment camps, there is political and cultural indoctrination occurring in schools and authorities using the compulsory collection of biometric data (like DNA & voice samples), artificial intelligence, big data, and movement restrictions to control the population.

Uyghur women are subjected to pregnancy checks, and forced abortions and sterilizations have been performed on many. Those who have too many children are sent to detention camps unless they can pay substantial fines.

The Chinese Communist Party restricts the use of the Uyghur language and has demolished Uyghur graveyards and shrines. There have also been credible reports of extrajudicial mass killings.

The Chinese Communist Party restricts the use of the Uyghur language and has demolished Uyghur graveyards and shrines. There have also been credible reports of extrajudicial mass killings.

A Human Rights Watch report notes that the “human rights violations in Xinjiang today are of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution”, and explains the motivation behind it:

“Authorities have sought to justify harsh treatment in the name of maintaining stability and security in Xinjiang, and to “strike at” those deemed terrorists and extremists in a “precise” and “in-depth” manner. Xinjiang officials claim the root of these problems is the “problematic ideas” of Turkic Muslims. These ideas include what authorities describe as extreme religious dogmas, but also any non-Han Chinese sense of identity, be it Islamic, Turkic, Uyghur, or Kazakh. Authorities insist that such beliefs and affinities must be “corrected” or “eradicated.”

Media:

• House Foreign Affairs Committee Joint Press Release

• Causes (Uyghur Forced Labor & Solar Panels)

• Causes (Uyghur Forced Labor Senate Vote)

• Causes (U.S. Declares CCP Genocide Against Uyghurs)