The International Criminal Court (ICC) declined to open an investigation into China’s forced detention of more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities on Monday, stating that prosecution at this time is not possible, since China is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which is the founding pillar of the court.
In a report released by the office of ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, the court says that the “precondition for the exercise of the court's territorial jurisdiction did not appear to be met with respect to the majority of the crimes alleged”, since they appear “to have been committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute”. However, Bensouda’s office has left the file open, which means that the court could still pursue a case if more evidence is presented to the body.
Beijing has been accused of numerous crimes against ethnic and religious minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, including setting up a mass detention and surveillance system and subjecting Muslims to forced labour, birth control, sterilization, and marriages, as well as torture. The international community has decried China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide, with the US even imposing sanctions against senior Chinese officials for their involvement in human rights abuses. However, Beijing has consistently dismissed the criticism, maintaining that the facilities in Xinjiang are job training centres, aimed at countering religious extremism and terrorism.
Rodney Dixon, the lead barrister in the attempted ICC case against China, told The Guardian, that his team “will be providing highly relevant evidence [to the court] ... in the coming months,” adding: “We are engaging with the office of the prosecutor as these proceedings go on with the aim of opening a full investigation.”
The additional evidence will need to include more details of instances of Chinese authorities rounding up Uighurs from abroad, specifically Tajikistan and Cambodia, and forcing them back into China. Both Dushanbe and Phnom Penh are signatories to the global court, which could make it possible for the ICC to potentially open an investigation, given that it can exercise jurisdiction over international crimes when part of the criminal conduct takes place on the territory of a state that is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
The ICC did the same thing when it approved an investigation into abuses against the Rohingyas in Myanmar in 2019, despite the country not being a member of the court. At the time, the ICC said that because some of the crimes had taken place in Bangladesh, which ratified the Rome Statute in 2010, it had jurisdiction to launch a probe into the allegations.
However, the court’s Monday report said that there was “no basis to proceed at this time” on allegations of forced repatriations of Uighurs, arguing that there did not appear to be enough evidence to show that Chinese officials had committed a crime. “Not all conduct which involves the forcible removal of persons from a location necessarily constitutes the crime of forcible transfer or deportation,” the document read.
The complaint against China—which was filed on behalf of exiled Uighurs—is the first of its kind and the only way that Beijing’s officials could be criminally investigated and prosecuted at the international level for abuses against Muslim minorities. However, given that the ICC is already entangled in a dispute with the United States (US) over war crime allegations against American troops in Afghanistan, it remains to be seen whether the court will take up a case against another global superpower. Earlier this month, it dropped its investigation into war crimes committed by British forces in Iraq, claiming that the United Kingdom (UK) had already taken measures to do so itself.
Against this backdrop, it has been argued that the most powerful and wealthy countries conveniently escape the purview of the ICC, given that the court’s active investigations concern the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, Burundi, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. At the same time, the ICC is also overseeing preliminary examinations of Bolivia, Colombia, Guinea, the Philippines, and Venezuela. Additionally, over the past weekend, Chief Prosecutor Bensouda recommended setting up a formal investigation into war crimes in Nigeria.
ICC Will Not Investigate China Over Uighur Genocide Claims
The global court said that it would not launch an inquiry for the time being, since China was not a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC.
December 16, 2020
A facility believed to be a “re-education camp,” where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in Artux in China's Xinjiang region, in 2019. SOURCE: GREG BAKER/AFP via THE NEW YORK TIMES