Condemning the Ongoing Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity Being Committed By the People's Republic of China

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 317) condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity being committed against Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups by the People's Republic of China, as amended.

The Clerk read the title of the resolution.

The text of the resolution is as follows: H. Res. 317

Whereas, on December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) signifying a commitment in response to the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity committed in the first half of the twentieth century;

Whereas the Genocide Convention entered into force on January 12, 1951, and declares that all state parties ``confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish'';

Whereas the Genocide Convention defines genocide as ``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'';

Whereas the United States ratified the Genocide Convention with the understanding that the commission of genocide requires ``the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a [protected] group as such'';

Whereas the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a state party to the Genocide Convention;

Whereas, since 2017, the PRC Government, under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has detained and sought to indoctrinate more than one million Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups;

Whereas recent data indicate a significant drop in birth rates among Uyghurs due to enforced sterilization, enforced abortion, and more onerous birth quotas for Uyghurs compared to Han;

Whereas there are credible reports of PRC Government campaigns to promote marriages between Uyghurs and Han and to reduce birth rates among Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims;

Whereas many Uyghurs reportedly have been assigned to factory employment under conditions that indicate forced labor, and some former detainees have reported food deprivation, beatings, suppression of religious practices, family separation, and sexual abuse;

Whereas this is indicative of a systematic effort to eradicate the ethnic and cultural identity and religious beliefs, and prevent the births of, Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, and members of religious minority groups;

Whereas the birth rate in the Xinjiang region fell by 24 percent in 2019 compared to a 4.2 percent decline nationwide;

Whereas, on January 19, 2021, the Department of State determined the PRC Government, under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang;

Whereas Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have both stated that what has taken place in Xinjiang is genocide and constitutes crimes against humanity;

Whereas Article VIII of the Genocide Convention provides, ``Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide'';

Whereas the International Court of Justice has stated that it is the obligation of all state parties to the Genocide Convention to ``employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible''; and

Whereas the United States is a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) finds that the ongoing abuses against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups constitute genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention and crimes against humanity as understood under customary international law;

(2) attributes these atrocity crimes against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups to the People's Republic of China, under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party;

(3) condemns this genocide and these crimes against humanity in the strongest terms; and

(4) calls upon the President to direct the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States to--

(A) refer the People's Republic of China's genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups to the competent organs of the United Nations for investigation;

(B) seize the United Nations Security Council of the circumstances of this genocide and crimes against humanity and lead efforts to invoke multilateral sanctions in response to these ongoing atrocities; and

(C) take all possible actions to bring this genocide and these crimes against humanity to an end and hold the perpetrators of these atrocities accountable under international law.

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Mr. MEEKS. Res. 317, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 317, as amended, condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity being committed against Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups by the People's Republic of China. And I was proud to introduce this resolution alongside my good friend, Ranking Member McCaul, and working collectively with him.

Mr. Speaker, I have said previously, and I will say this again, as an African American who has faced the brunt end of injustice for no reason other than the color of my skin and watched my parents suffer, I am very sensitive to the deep wounds of intolerance and oppression that many minority populations endure across the globe.

Again, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said: ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'' and ``I refuse to be silent,'' another statement of Dr. King because silence can be complicity.

Dr. King called us all to be champions of human rights, not just here in the United States, but wherever human rights are under threat.

And we have seen grave human rights abuses in China. In Xinjiang, the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minority groups are subjected to systematic human rights violations that amounts to a genocide and crimes against humanity as defined by the Geneva Convention.

The crimes taking place against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang are horrific in their scope and severity. And we know of these atrocities because many survivors began speaking out at great risk to their personal safety and that of their families. They provided firsthand accounts confirming China's targeted campaign of repression. Meanwhile, journalists, scholars, and activists who have tried to uncover what is happening have been targeted and expelled.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has heard harrowing accounts from survivors of mass internment, forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, suppression of religious practices, family separation, sexual abuse, and other inhumane practices.

During a hearing on May 6 of this year, survivor Tursunay Ziyawudun ended her testimony by imploring the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Congress to act. And we are here today to do just that.

This resolution unequivocally declares that a genocide is taking place in the Uyghur region. I agree with that declaration and so do many others around the world.

This resolution is a clarion call, not just to every nation in the world, but to every person on this planet that the United States Congress will not remain silent, no matter how powerful the perpetrator.

We must continue to call out the government of the People's Republic of China for these atrocities and others all over the world and have them take all possible actions to bring this genocide and these crimes against humanity to an end.

I say to the world, we are starting with China. We are going all over the world. Human rights are on the front burner in the United States House of Representatives and clearly on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

This is an important resolution. I close by saying I support and am glad to work with the ranking member, Mr. McCaul.

Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, thank Mr. McCaul for his leadership. It is my pleasure to work with him on this bill to get this to the floor and to pass it on this floor, the people's House, in a bipartisan way, sending a strong message together. That is what this does. So I thank him for his friendship, and I thank him for standing up, as he does, and working together in a bipartisan way.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 317, condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity being committed against the Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups by the People's Republic of China is critical to demonstrating to those suffering in Xinjiang that they haven't been forsaken. And to the government of Beijing, we will speak out when it tramples the universal rights that every human being deserves.

It gives me hope that we are not the first parliamentary body that has deemed the PRC's action in Xinjiang a genocide. The parliaments of the U.K., of Canada, of Lithuania, among others, have already taken the right stand. We must support them. We must work with them and multilateral groups. We must encourage other nations and other people to speak out. But I am proud we are speaking out here today in the United States Congress, in the people's House. We will not be silent.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that all my colleagues will join me in supporting this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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