This post is being made in response to the `*discourse*` that has been going on around China and Xinjiang.
A lot of hedging on either side of this debate has to do with the definition of genocide. The whole “oh, there’s no mass killings, but maybe the situation fits the definition of cultural genocide,” and that sort of of rhetoric.
TL;DR what I’m going to try to do in this post is define genocide, what the history of that definition is and why it matters to this discussion, and show why it is not in anyway applicable to the situation in Xinjiang outside of its value as atrocity propaganda used to manufacture consent for some kind of intervention/war.
Part 1, Lets get into definitions
I’m going to be pulling a lot from the BadEmpanada video titled " The Problem with Genocide " for this part, and in the video notes he provides a good number of sources that you can follow if you want to do further reading on the history of this term.
The popular and commonly accepted definition of genocide is the mass murder of a specific ethnic, religious, or other marginalized group, in an attempt to eliminate that group. And in the popularly accepted definition, mass murder is considered to be an essential part of ruling something as a genocide or not.
The problem is that this definition of genocide is significantly altered and much more narrow from how it was originally defined. The term genocide was first coined by the polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. What caused him to become interested in defining a legal term for what we now call genocide was that he “noticed many historical instances of attempts to eradicate entire peoples or cultures, but there was no specific term for such acts. So he spent most of the 1930s trying to conceptualize a crime that would encompass them.” What he noticed is that these acts were unique in their motivation and scale, and that the group that carried out these crimes were themselves nation states, or in high offices within nation states, or were being carried out on behalf of an in the interests of the nation state or whoever was in the ruling party at the time. What this called for, Lemkin reasoned, was a law that was international in scope and could be enforced internationally, since any national law would simply be ignored by that ruling party that was carrying out the genocide.
As far as what actions would be included in the legal definition, Lemkin was very broad in defining what should fall under the umbrella of genocide. To quote Lemkin,
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.
The following illustration will suffice. The confiscation of property of nationals of an occupied area on the ground that they have left the country may be considered simply as a deprivation of their individual property rights. However, if the confiscations are ordered against individuals solely because they are Poles, Jews, or Czechs, then the same confiscations tend to weaken the national entities of which those persons are members.
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor."
“In the incorporated areas, such as western Poland, Eupen, Malmédy and Moresnet, Luxemburg, and Alsace-Lorraine, local institutions of self-government were destroyed and a German pattern of administration imposed. Every reminder of former national character was obliterated. Even commercial signs and inscriptions on buildings, roads, and streets, as well as names of communities and of localities, were changed to a German form. Nationals of Luxemburg having foreign or non-German first names are required to assume in lieu thereof the corresponding German first names; or, if that is impossible, they must select German first names. As to their family names, if they were of German origin and their names have been changed to a non-German form, they must be changed again to the original German. Persons who have not complied with these requirements within the prescribed period are liable to a penalty, and in addition German names may be imposed on them. Analogous provisions as to changing of names were made for Lorraine.”
“The Jews were immediately deprived of the elemental means of existence. As to the Poles in incorporated Poland, the purpose of the occupant was to shift the economic resources from the Polish national group to the German national group. Thus the Polish national group had to be impoverished and the German enrichsed. This was achieved primarily by confiscation of Polish property under the authority of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanism. But the process was likewise furthered by the policy of regimenting trade and handicrafts, since licenses for such activities were issued to Germans, and only exceptionally to Poles. In this way, the Poles were expelled from trade, and the Germans entered that field.”
source: Axis Rule in Occupied Europe," Raphael Lemkin 1941
And to sum up Lemkin:
“Thus, Lemkin defined genocide in terms of the violation of a nation’s right to its collective existence - genocide in this sense is quite simply the destruction of a nation. Such destruction can be achieved through the ‘mass killings of all members of a nation,’ or through ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups.’”
source: Australia: A Continuing Genocide?," Damien Short 2010
What we can see from these definitions and descriptions is that there is no separation or distinction between genocide carried out via mass killings, and genocide carried out through means of “cultural genocide.” Lemkin made no distinction between these two things, and considered all of these as sufficient criteria for prosecuting something as a genocide. Methods of forced assimilation, destruction of local culture, language, national identifiers, as well as economic discrimination. Any of these actions were sufficient to rule something as a genocide on their own, with no need to be accompanied by mass killings.
At least, that is how Lemkin defined the crime, and that is the legal definition that he fought for when bringing the matter up to international bodies like the UN when he was advocating for genocide to be adopted as an international crime that was subject to UN backed intervention. Here is where definitions of genocide start to diverge.
Lemkin obviously prioritized having a criminal code for genocide that had international backing, otherwise it was unenforceable. This became a problem when a large number of UN member nations refused to sign off on any definition of genocide that included political, economic, social, and cultural marginalization of national groups as being categorized as a genocide, as well as techniques like forced assimilation of national groups to the cultural/legal/institutional norms of the dominant national group.
The reason for this push back is that UN member nations were concerned that a definition of genocide that categorized those things as genocidal could be used to prosecute their own governments for genocidal behavior based on how they treated national groups in their own borders as well as through colonial/neo-colonial influences.
Lemkin fought bitterly to keep these criteria in the “official” UN definition of genocide, but ultimately relented and accepted a definition that was much more limited in scope. This was because he needed enough nations to sign onto the declaration in order for it to be enforceable by an international body, and he figured that having a law with a very limited scope was better than nothing.
And this is where the modern definition of genocide comes from, and why “cultural genocide” is commonly considered to be a separate category rather than an essential criteria for classifying something as a genocide. It comes from a process where the criminals were allowed to define the crime, and therefore ensure that they could avoid prosecution.
This definition comes from the UN genocide convention in 1948, which limits the definition of genocide to the following:
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(continued in the comments)
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We have a definition of genocide which makes almost no reference to cultural destruction, despite Lemkin considering cultural destruction as being a core component of his definition of genocide. He describes his involvement with drafting the UN convention in his autobiography:
“I defended [cultural genocide] successfully through two drafts. It meant the destruction of the cultural patter of a group, such as the language, the traditions, the monuments, archives, libraries, churches. In brief: the shrines of the soul of a nation. But there was not enough support for this idea in the Committee (…) So with a heavy heart I decided not to press for it.”
Part 2, why does this matter?
A lot of this conversation about how do you define genocide and what technically counts as genocide feels a lot like pedantry. “We know that genocide is bad, we don’t need to split hairs to call something bad.”
But this history is very important, and it’s important to understand both the crime of genocide, as well as all of the things that genocide encompasses, as well as understanding the motivation for why many nations would want to have a narrower definition for genocide in order to discuss how that shapes the narrative around genocide and our understanding of genocide.
So lets take a look at what crimes are being effectively buried and hidden from being prosecuted as a genocide that otherwise should be considered a genocide based off of the original, academic formulation.
America is chock full of these examples, as well as the colonial empires of the British, French, Spanish, Germans, and so on.
In no particular order, from America we have biological warfare against Native Americans, events like the trail of tears, systematically forcing native populations into “reservations,” indigenous schools designed to “Americanize” native children, paying settlers to go out and murder nearby native populations and paying for every scalp delivered. A lot of these actions would fall under the “official” definition of genocide, where members of the group were deliberately killed or physically destroyed, but those things happened “way in the past.” However, the isolation of large parts of the remaining native population into reservations which are basically slums with little to no access to economic development should absolutely be considered an ongoing act of genocide. Similarly, you have the apartheid that is American Black Codes and American Jim Crow that legally enshrined a segregated and second class status to black Americans that was ongoing and would continue for sometime afterward when the UN genocide convention was being drafted.
Some examples that were given by representatives that were a part of drafting the resolution:
Sweden noted that its forced conversion of the Lapps to Christianity might lay it open to accusations of cultural genocide.
Brazil warned that ‘some minorities might have used it as an excuse for opposing perfectly normal assimilation in new countries.’ (New countries in this context meaning settler colonial states)
South Africa endorsed the remarks of New Zealand, insisting upon ‘the danger latent in the provisions of article III where primitive or backward groups were concerned.’
Source: “Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes,” William Schabas
And then we have what is somewhat of a low hanging fruit when talking about the history of colonial regimes, which basically conducted themselves exactly in line with Lemkin’s definition of genocide. You militarily occupy a region, claim authority over the region as your colony, implement your own government and legal system that has two tiers for colonizers and the colonized, and impose that rule against the colonized and in exclusion to their own legal and social customs. And indigenous schools were a large part of enforcing this colonial rule on a social level as they were institutions that tried to scrub out any native identity and culture and enforce the colonial nation’s culture as the correct culture.
And lets take a moment to really interrogate what indigenous schools do, and why they relevant when talking about genocide, especially when using Lemkin’s definition. Indigenous schools at their core are an institution of forced assimilation. They take children and punish them for using their native language, punish them for wearing native styles of clothing, punish them for eating their traditional cultural dishes, and create an environment that creates deep shame for expressing any kind of cultural heritage. It’s a systematic process that forcibly takes an entire generation and tries to destroy any association they have with their parent’s culture, and in its place you teach them the colonizer’s language, the colonizer’s style of dress, the colonizer’s style of worship, the colonizer’s values, the colonizer’s mode of economic organization, the colonizer’s legal structure, and so on.
As a side note, this is also where the conception of cultural appropriation comes from. On its face, sharing music, styles of dress, cuisine, ideas of spirituality, and so on across cultures isn’t some nefarious thing. What makes something cultural appropriation is when you have this greater context of colonization and forced assimilation, where these national groups have their heritage forcibly torn away from them, ridiculed, and used as a signifier of “backwardness,” “savagery,” and marks them as a second class citizen, only for members of the dominant group to take that same heritage and commodify it as exotic novelties.