China is “trying to normalize these kinds of behaviors, and also they are testing the patience of the civilized world,” Turkel said. The CCP is “trying to make it okay to punish collectively vulnerable religious and ethnic minorities,” he said.
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To Sobolik, the genocide in Xinjiang “is a test bed not just for the techno-authoritarianism” described by Turkel but “for what a world would look like if the Chinese Communist Party not only has an in to your communications and the way you consume information but the actual governance that you would sit under,” he said. “If this is not abated in any way, we’re heading toward a really dark place.”
According to a 1948 United Nations treaty, genocide is defined as murder and other acts with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Abbas spoke from Brussels, Belgium, where she was advocating for the Uyghurs at the European Union. Her sister, a retired doctor, was detained in 2018, six days after Abbas took part in a panel at a Washington, D.C., think tank, and the CCP acknowledged in 2020 she had been sentenced to 20 years in prison, Abbas said.
Video of the online event – “Oppression and the Olympics: What Christians Should Know About China’s Human Rights Atrocities” – is available here.
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.
