With one foot out the door on Tuesday, the Trump administration issued a formal declaration that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang, its westernmost region. Activists have been begging for such a designation for years. The details emerging from Xinjiang since 2017 have been grim, and it has long been clear to both Uighur and other victimized communities and to many international lawyers that China’s abuses may constitute genocide. The incarceration of over 1 million people in so-called reeducation camps without process of law; the massive, high-tech surveillance operation aimed at detecting any expression of Uighur identity; the suppression of cultural and religious practices; the forced sterilization of Uighur women—all of these suggest the presence of the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” required to establish the crime of genocide.
So imminently outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement that he has “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang” should have been welcome news. And for some, no doubt, it will be. For victims of mass atrocities, the relief of recognition can be profound. This is especially true when that recognition comes from an actor as powerful as the United States. But for many who have watched the situation in Xinjiang unfold with growing horror, Pompeo’s declaration triggers only frustration. A statement that a genocide is occurring in a foreign country is a political act, not a legal finding, and its impact therefore depends entirely on the reputation and credibility of the speaker. And right now, Pompeo, for all his boasts of having restored “swagger” to the State Department, has very little of either. Nor does the United States itself.
