Not previously seen documents leaked from inside the top echelons of the Communist Party tie China’s top leaders directly to the massive atrocities in Xinjiang –including never-before-seen secret speeches by the great leader himself.
The documents were provided to the Uyghur Tribunal in London in September this year. It investigated, and held an extra, third session on them, in London and online, last Saturday Nov. 27 (recording of the live session) — as a special session called ahead of the Tribunal’s scheduled verdict, which is to be announced Dec. 9 (here).
Now, the German scholar Adrian Zenz has published the main points of the Nov. 27 hearing. Links below. Basically, the leak of Chinese Communist Party high level documents that was made to the New York Times in 2019, was then repeated to the Tribunal in September this year, and Zenz was asked to investigate. Online, last Saturday, we saw him and his peer reviewers David Tobin and James Millward review, compare and discuss the verified secret documents and their significance.
The files show that Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and another former central government official directly and indirectly demanded policies that were then implemented, esp. after 2016: – Internments – Coercive labor transfers – Centralized boarding education – Birth control” [ …]
These “Xinjiang Papers” were “originally reported on by the NYT on November 16, 2019 — and they are not to be confused with the China Cables, a different set of leaked documents which were also secret but not top secret, and which were published and analyzed around the same time in 2019, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and by Zenz (see here and here).
Curiously, it now has become evident that the NYT in 2019 omitted many key points, including the three damning top-secret speeches from Xi Jinping himself on the policies for the atrocities. Basically, the NYT failed to publish the documents fully. (Questions are already being raised about what the NYT editors thought they were doing — and perhaps the leaker was dissatisfied with the how NYT sat on the rest of it, for years? — and then released the leak one more time to the Tribunal? — which is, anyway, a suitable destination, since it has now amassed a formidable set of evidence on the atrocities, through hearings and written testimonies throughout 2021, and to which this is now added).
Zenz’ formal publication, at the Tribunal’s website:
The Xinjiang Papers: An Introduction. Dr. Adrian Zenz. Senior Fellow in China Studies, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, D.C., November 27, 2021.
Zenz’ explanatory Twitter thread.
His thread of explanations is also collected here for convenience.
In Zenz’ paper, … there are also transcripts of some documents: The first table has links to 3 of 11 document transcripts, more said to be on the way over time.
Direct links to these transcripts are here:
https://uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Transcript-Document-01.pdf
https://uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Transcript-Document-02.pdf
https://uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Transcript-Document-04.pdf
All in all it is a chilling, further confirmation that the mass atrocities under way in Xinjiang since 2016/17, is China’s state policy, and the state leaders are themselves the responsible genocidaires. This is important, even though we sort of knew this already, not least from Xi Jinping’s 2020 public meeting where he declared his Xinjiang policies to be “totally correct” as carried out.
These atrocities are “genocide” under the 1948 international Convention against genocide, something confirmed not only by the demonstrated intent, and the multiple actions listed in the Convention text (mass forced sterilizations being the first and foremost, plus the mass family separations and confiscations of children) but also by the massive ongoing assault on Uyghur culture (monuments, mosques and shrines, language, music, etc.; cf. my overview).
Sadly, such cultural destruction was not included in the 1948 Convention. But, this year, systematic cultural destruction was recognized by the International Criminal Court as potentially important corroborating evidence for genocide. I spoke about the significance of this point in my paper, “Genocide and Cultural Genocide in China,” for the conference “Uyghur Crisis-Genocide, Ethnocide, or Crimes Against Humanity?” at Newcastle University, England; 1-3 September 2021, in Panel 5, Sept. 1, 17:00-18:15, “Is What’s Happening in Xinjiang ‘Genocide’?” — my presentation was recorded here (from 3:00-17:00).
Also see: “International Criminal Court: Cultural Heritage & Genocide. Lessons from new ICC policy apply to China’s genocide against Uyghur people.” By Kate Fitz Gibbon. Cultural Property News, August 1, 2021.
For more, see my periodically updated online bibliography on the genocide.
–Yrs.
Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu