Uighurs urge ICC to probe ‘genocide’
Exiled Uighurs have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate China for genocide and crimes against humanity, filing a huge dossier of evidence with the Hague-based court to back their case.
The evidence handed to the ICC's prosecutor accuses China of locking more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in re-education camps and of forcibly sterilising women.
China has called the accusations baseless and says the facilities in the northwestern Xinjiang region are job training centres aimed at steering people away from terrorism.
China is not an ICC member but lawyers for the Uighurs said the court could follow the example of its ongoing probe into the treatment of Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar, which is also not party to the tribunal. ICC judges ruled in 2018 that the Rohingya investigation could go ahead because the situation in Myanmar affects people in neighbouring Bangladesh, which is a ICC member.
The evidence filed with the court showed that China was guilty of "harsh repressive measures" which include murders, disappearances, torture, and harrowing accounts of sterilisations and birth control measures.
The dossier includes a list of senior Chinese Communist Party members who are allegedly responsible for the treatment of the Uighurs including President Xi Jinping.
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