Opinion | Uyghur Tribunal: Another farce in the making

By Grenville Cross

In London, from June 4-7, several hearings were held by a self-appointed tribunal into alleged genocide and human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region. It plans to reconvene for further hearings between Sept 10-13, and to issue its conclusions by year's end. These hearings, however, are not being held under the auspices of either the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, but are the work of a group of freelancers whose views on China are already well-known.

The tribunal is chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a British barrister, with Nick Vetch, a businessman, as his vice-chairman. It has also recruited Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, a human rights lawyer, to be its "External Advisor". Nice and Vetch have previously worked closely together, and also in relation to China. In 2019, they both sat on the so-called "China Tribunal", also chaired by Nice, and to which China strongly objected. Then, as now, the tribunal was devoid of official status, although this did not prevent it from producing a damning report which accused China of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.

China, however, saw things somewhat differently, and declined to cooperate with the "China Tribunal". Its London embassy denied the allegations, insisting that the Chinese government followed World Health Organization principles on human transplants, and that, under Chinese law, human organ donations must "be done voluntarily and gratis". The embassy, moreover, expressed the hope that "the British people will not be misled by rumors".

Once again, aping international nomenclature, those inquiring into the Xinjiang situation have grandly styled themselves the "Uyghur Tribunal" (the tribunal). Although Nice says the tribunal plans to "review evidence" and then "reach a judgment", it has no legal standing and no enforcement powers. He says, nonetheless, that "what we hope to achieve is to provide facts that others may use". Indeed, if his new report is as critical of China as was his last one, those unnamed "others" will lap it up like manna from heaven, just as they will disregard it if it is exculpatory.

China, of course, denies that abuses have taken place. It insists that, faced with a proliferation of terrorist atrocities by separatists that caused numerous fatalities and destabilized the region, it was necessary to initiate a de-radicalization program. The purpose of this was to re-educate people at risk of indoctrination, to provide them with rehabilitative training, and to reduce poverty. Indeed, the spokesman for the Xinjiang regional government, Xu Guixiang, has described the tribunal's hearings as a "total violation of international law and order, a serious desecration of the victims of real genocide, and a serious provocation to the 25 million people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang".

Given its concerns over the tribunal's bona fides, China has refused to have any truck with it, with the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, saying it is "neither legal nor credible". Although he describes the tribunal as "just another anti-China farce concocted by a few individuals", both Nice and Vetch have claimed it will be fairly conducted. Whereas Nice insists that the tribunal will seek "to reach an impartial and considered judgment on whether international crimes are proved to have been committed by the PRC", Vetch says it is "an independent endeavor and it will deal with the evidence and only the evidence". As they both presumably realize, their report, to have any credibility, must at least give the appearance of objectivity, yet this is precisely where their problems lie.

To objective observers, the close involvement of Nice and Vetch with the "China Tribunal" in 2019 is indicative of an anti-China mindset. As China sees it, there is a sustained campaign in the West to misrepresent the situation in Xinjiang, the purpose of which is to harm its international standing. Indeed, both Nice and Kennedy were among the nine individuals and four organizations sanctioned by China on March 26, for having "maliciously spread lies and disinformation" about the "so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang". Although this cannot have pleased either of them, the obvious thing for them to have done, given that justice must always be seen to be done, would have been to recuse themselves from the tribunal, but this has not happened. The impression, therefore, that they have a grudge against the country they are investigating is inescapable, although this is by no means all.

On June 4, Benedict Rogers, the serial fantasist who runs Hong Kong Watch, the propaganda outfit which specializes in churning out fallacies about China, claimed that it was he who had introduced Nice to the Uyghurs, some two and a half years previously. He has, moreover, clearly taken a shine to Nice, as he recently appointed him a Hong Kong Watch patron, alongside the likes of the rabid China basher and former governor, Chris Patten. But things go deeper than this, as another of its patrons is Lord (David) Alton, whose name will forever be linked with the now-infamous report on the Hong Kong Police Force, which the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, of which he is a vice-chair, produced in 2020.

To recap, the APPG, which, despite its name, has no official standing, was established on Nov 5, 2019, and it then announced it would hold an inquiry into the police force's handling of medical workers during the Hong Kong protests. Once, however, the inquiry was established, researchers discovered that the APPG was being covertly funded by Stand with Hong Kong, an anti-police body with close ties to both the protest movement and Hong Kong Watch. Since he who pays the piper calls the tune, Stand with Hong Kong expected the APPG to produce a damning report, and it got exactly what it had paid for. Indeed, the APPG's report, which maligned a brave and professional body of men and women, was, by any yardstick, a travesty of justice, and contemptuous of traditional British notions of fair play. That unsavory episode leads inexorably into the question of who is funding Nice's inquiry, and at this point foreign money again rears its ugly head.

According to the tribunal's website, it was in June 2020 that "Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, formally requested that Sir Geoffrey Nice QC establish an independent people's tribunal to investigate 'ongoing atrocities and possible genocide' against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim populations". The World Uyghur Congress, founded in 2004, is substantially funded by the US-backed National Endowment for Democracy, which promotes US policy interests abroad. In 2019, for example, it gave $380,000 to the World Uyghur Congress, and some, at least, of this will have made its way into the tribunal's coffers. Indeed, of its own financing, the tribunal frankly admits that crowdfunding "has raised nearly 250,000 pounds ($351,000), with an initial amount of $115,000 donated by the World Uyghur Congress".

In other words, the US, through the money the NED has pumped into the World Uyghur Congress, has a direct interest in the outcome of Nice's inquiry into the Uyghurs, in exactly the same way that Stand with Hong Kong had a direct interest in the outcome of the APPG inquiry into the Hong Kong Police Force. At this point, the plot becomes yet more intriguing, as the tribunal has also revealed that it was launched "on 3 September 2020, with assistance from a non-governmental organization, the Coalition for Genocide Response". This coalition was founded by the Benedict Rogers' protege and Hong Kong Watch functionary, Luke Pulford, who also has close links to Stand with Hong Kong. And who should be the patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response but David Alton, the Hong Kong Watch patron, who visited Hong Kong in November 2019 on a freebie funded by Stand with Hong Kong, and now apparently hopes, on the back of the Uyghurs, to reprise his role in the APPG scandal.

It was, therefore, wholly unsurprising that, on Sept 23, 2020, in the House of Lords, Alton asked the British foreign office minister, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad, if the government would "welcome" the initiative to set up the "Uyghur Tribunal", and "cooperate" with it. Although the minister's reply was non-committal, the tribunal has since thanked the government for fast-tracking visas for foreign nationals to attend the tribunal. Given Alton's links with Hong Kong Watch, the extent to which it is covertly involved in the tribunal should not be underestimated, particularly as its CEO, Benedict Rogers, is also an adviser to the World Uyghur Congress, which completes the circle.

Hong Kong Watch, moreover, despite its name, is now operating on various fronts, increasingly unrelated to Hong Kong, but which all have China animosity at their core. It was instrumental, for example, in the creation in 2020 of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), that now spans 11 countries and parliaments, and seeks to pressure governments into adopting policies hostile to China. Whereas IPAC's co-chair is none other than the tribunal's "External Advisor", Baroness Helena Kennedy, and its coordinator (and founder) is Hong Kong Watch's own Luke Pulford, Rogers himself is a member of its advisory group. Indeed, IPAC has driven the campaign to have the situation in Xinjiang categorized in national parliaments as "genocide", and it is now pressing, over the Uyghur issue, for a "diplomatic boycott" of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

Quite clearly, therefore, Hong Kong Watch is a multi-headed hydra, and right-thinking people everywhere must shun it like the plague. With Rogers pulling the strings, it provides platforms for Sinophobes like Patten, lionizes fugitive criminals like Ted Hui Chi-fung, uses proxies like Pulford to create anti-China front organizations, and makes titled dupes like Alton available to provide an aura of respectability to otherwise nondescript entities. Since Rogers, moreover, by making him a patron, has already tied Nice to Hong Kong Watch's shirttails, the tribunal he is chairing is hopelessly compromised, and anything it produces cannot be taken seriously.

Indeed, although the tribunal proclaims that its proceedings are conducted "in accordance with international law and international legal norms", anybody tuning in to watch its proceedings would have been startled at its cavalier approach to evidentiary issues. Questioners, for example, repeatedly put the answers they wanted to hear into the mouths of witnesses, and the rule which inhibits the use of hearsay evidence was routinely flouted. Much of the "evidence" was simply read out, and incoherences were left unexplored for fear of undermining credibility. Not much was expected of the tribunal, but it could at least have respected its own ground rules.

Nonetheless, Nice has indicated that the tribunal's judgment is not preordained. His hands, however, are tied by those who expect him to deliver the findings they want. Indeed, in December, Rahima Mahmut, the UK representative of the World Uyghur Congress, made clear that he wants the British government to sanction Chinese officials, saying "I hope it is a matter of time". And, given the money his organization has given the tribunal, he clearly expects Nice to come up with the goods. Once it does, he hopes to try to force the government's hand on sanctions, a possibility the tribunal also envisages.

The tribunal has indicated that, once its judgment is delivered, "whatever it may be", it will be for states, international institutions, commercial companies, art, medical and educational institutions, to decide how to apply it in their dealings with China. This, it explains, "would include, but is not limited to, trade and other sanctions, including against individuals, proscribing the sale of technologies, surveillance and medical equipment and the declaration of ineligibility for visas". If ever there was a classic instance of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink", this must be it. If, therefore, Nice can come up with a judgment which is suitably condemnatory of China, all those who have backed his tribunal, financially or otherwise, will rub their hands in glee, ecstatic that their efforts have been rewarded.

The "Uyghur Tribunal" claims that it is "run by an independent civil society body comprising of a group of legal practitioners, academics and civil society leaders dedicated to impartiality, objectivity and a fair outcome". If this is true, it begs the question of why so many organizations hostile to China, all with vested interests of their own, are so heavily involved behind the scenes, albeit in different ways. Although Nice may yet surprise us, all the signs point to the tribunal simply dancing to the tune of others, in which case its report, like that of the APPG before it, will not be worth the paper it is written on.

The author is a senior counsel, law professor and criminal justice analyst, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.

(Source: China Daily)

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