The Independent Report Claiming Uyghur Genocide
March 19, 2021
It was brought to you by a sham university and neocon ideologues lobbying to
punish China for U.S. interests, Ajit Singh reports.
By Ajit Singh
The Grayzone
Throughout March, headlines in corporate media outlets from CNN to The
Guardian blared about the release of the first independent report to
authoritatively determine that the Chinese government has violated each and
every act of the United Nations convention against genocide, and therefore
bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs.
The report, published on March 8 by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and
Policy, in collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights,
follows a last-minute accusation made in January by the outgoing Trump
administration, along with similar declarations by the Dutch and Canadian
Parliaments. It was published shortly after the release of a remarkably
similar report on Feb. 8 that was commissioned by the U.S. government-backed
World Uyghur Congress, and which alleged that there is a credible case
against the Chinese government for genocide.
CNN, The Guardian, AFP, and the CBC hailed the March 8 Newlines report as an
independent analysis and a landmark legal report that involved dozens
of international experts. Samantha Power, the Biden administrations
nominee to direct the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),
also promoted it: This report shows how this [genocide] is precisely what
China is doing with the Uighurs, the notorious humanitarian interventionist
stated.
The reports authors have insisted that they are impartial and are not
advocating any course of action whatsoever. But a closer look at the report
and the institutions behind it reveals its authors claims of independence
and expertise to be a blatant deception.
Indeed, the reports principal author, Yonah Diamond, recently called on the
Biden administration to unilaterally confront, and punish China for
supposedly committing genocide, and expand sanctions against the country.
Meanwhile, the think tanks behind the report have advocated fervently for
the West to combat and sanction China, and have promoted U.S. regime
change policies targeting Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.
A majority of the reports expert signatories are members of the Newlines
Institute and the Wallenberg Centre. Others are members of the hawkish
Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, former U.S. State Department
officials, and ardent supporters of U.S. military interventionism.
The report relies most substantially on the expertise of Adrian Zenz, the
far-right evangelical ideologue, whose scholarship on China has been
demonstrated to be flawed, riddled with falsehoods and dishonest statistical
manipulation.
The reliance on the voluminous but demonstrably fraudulent work of Zenz is
not surprising, given that the report was financed by the Newlines
Institutes parent organization, the Fairfax University of America (FXUA).
FXUA is a disgraced institution that Virginia state regulators moved to shut
down in 2019 after finding that its teachers werent qualified to teach
their assigned courses, academic quality was patently deficient, and
plagiarism was rampant and ignored.
Just days before the Newlines Institute published its expert report
accusing China of genocide, an advisory board to the U.S. Department of
Education recommended terminating recognition of FXUAs accreditor, placing
its license in jeopardy.
Discredited Evidence
The Newlines report presents no new material on the condition of Uyghur
Muslims in China. Instead, it claims to have reviewed all of the available
evidence and applied international law to the evidence of the facts on the
ground.
Rather than conducting a thorough and comprehensive review of the available
evidence, the report restricted its survey to a narrow range of flawed
pseudo-scholarship along with reports by U.S. government-backed lobbying
fronts for the exiled Uyghur separatist movement. It was upon this faulty
foundation that the report applies legal analysis related to the UN Genocide
Convention.
Newlines report relies primarily on the dubious studies of Zenz, the U.S.
government propaganda outlet, Radio Free Asia, and claims made by the
U.S.-funded separatist network, the World Uyghur Congress. These three
sources comprise more than one-third of the references used to construct the
factual basis of the document, with Zenz as the most heavily relied upon
source cited on more than 50 occasions.
Many of the remaining references cite the work of members of Newlines
Institutes Uyghur Scholars Working Group, of which Zenz is a founding
member and which is made up of a small group of academics who collaborate
with him and support his conclusions.
As The Grayzone has reported, Zenz is a far-right Christian fundamentalist
who has said he is led by God against Chinas government, deplores
homosexuality and gender equality, and has taught exclusively in evangelical
theological institutions.
A careful review of Zenzs research shows that his assertion of genocide is
concocted through fraudulent statistical manipulation, cherry-picking of
source material and propagandistic misrepresentations.
His widely-cited reports were not published in peer-reviewed journals
overseen by academic institutions, but rather, by a D.C.-based CIA cut-out
called the Jamestown Foundation and The Journal of Political Risk, a
publication headed by former NATO and U.S. national security state
operatives.
As his academic malpractice comes to light, Zenz has faced increasing
scrutiny and embarrassment, as evidenced by his threat to take legal action
against his scholarly critics.
In order to shore up the reports credibility, and to deflect from its
essential reliance on Zenzs reports, its authors have emphasized their
supposed independence and impartiality.
This [is] not an advocacy document, were not advocating any course of
action whatsoever,, stated Azeem Ibrahim, director of special initiatives
at Newlines Institute. There were no campaigners involved in this report,
it was purely done by legal experts, area experts and China ethnic experts.
However, just weeks before the publication of the report, its principal
author, Yonah Diamond, penned a bellicose call for the Biden administration
to eschew the UN (which Diamond deems to be beholden to the Chinese
government) and unilaterally confront China. Following the Trump
administrations declaration that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang,
Diamond argued that the U.S. is legally obliged to punish China and that
the Biden administration must now take concrete action to that end together
with U.S. allies.
The report attempts to construct an appearance of broad expert consensus
supporting its conclusions, including a list of 33 independent expert
signatories. Unsurprisingly, this list consists of individuals pushing for a
New Cold War and confrontation with China, and who support separatist
efforts to transform the mineral-rich, geopolitically important region of
Xinjiang into a NATO-oriented ethno-state:
Irwin Cotler and Helena Kennedy co-chairs, along with Marco Rubio, of the
hawkish Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Composed almost
exclusively of white Western lawmakers, IPAC formed in 2020 in order to
mount a common defence against the rise of the Peoples Republic of
China. Members of the World Uyghur Congress executive, Erkin Ekrem and
Rahima Mahmut, sit on IPACs advisory board and secretariat; Zenz also sits
on the advisory board.
David Scheffer, Beth von Schaack and Gregory H. Stanton Scheffer and
Schaack are both former U.S. State Department ambassadors-at-large, while
Stanton is a former U.S. State Department official.
Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock the former Canadian minister of foreign
affairs and former Canadian UN ambassador, respectively.
Adrian Zenz founding member of Newlines Institutes Uyghur Scholars
Working Group.
Rather than consult a wide range of authorities and academic experts, or
subject its study to peer review, Newlines relied entirely on a narrowly
focused community of like-minded ideologues. A majority of the signatories
are members of the two think tanks behind the report, the Newlines Institute
and the Wallenberg Centre. Far from independent, these organizations are
partisan, self-described campaigners that align closely with U.S. and
Western foreign policy goals, advocating for sanctions and intervention
against China and other non-aligned nations across the Global South.
Newlines Institute
The supposedly independent report accusing China of genocide was published
by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy based in Washington, D.C.,
and known formerly as the Center for Global Policy. Founded in 2019, the
think tanks stated aim is to enhance US foreign policy with a
specialization in Muslim states and societies.
With extensive ties to the U.S. regime-change establishment, the Newlines
Institute is a reliable repository of anti-China material. For example, it
has featured the ramblings of Robert Spalding, the former senior director
for strategy to President Donald Trump and one of the architects of the
Trump administrations 2018 national security doctrine, which formally
reoriented U.S. foreign policy from a focus on the so-called global war on
terror towards great power competition with China and Russia.
The leadership of Newlines Institute includes former U.S. State Department
officials, U.S. military advisors, intelligence professionals who previously
worked for the shadow CIA private spying firm, Stratfor, and a collection
of interventionist ideologues. Its contributors represent a whos who of
Syria regime changers who cheer-led for U.S. military interventionism while
intimidating and bullying any prominent figure that dared present a critical
perspective on the proxy war.
Hassan Hassan, director; founder and editor-in-chief of Newlines Magazine
Ardent supporter of U.S. imperialism, including wars on Iraq, Libya, Yemen
and especially Syria. Along with Newlines contributor Michael Weiss, Hassan
called for the U.S. military to balkanize Syria, permanently occupy its
oil-rich Jazira region and turn the country into an American security
protectorate.
Azeem Ibrahim, director Adjunct research professor at the Strategic
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. Ibrahim is a co-author of the
Newlines report.
Kamran Bokhari, director Previously served as the Central Asia Studies
Course Coordinator at U.S. Department of States Foreign Service Institute
Faysal Itani, deputy director Former resident senior fellow at the U.S.
State Department-funded Atlantic Council, which functions as the
semi-official think tank of NATO in Washington, D.C.
Michael Weiss with jihadist rebels in Aleppo, Syria, in August 2012.
Michael Weiss, senior editor A veteran Israel lobbyist, neoconservative
activist and anti-Muslim agitator-turned advocate of Islamist insurgents in
Syria, Weiss has branded himself as an expert on Russia despite having never
visited the country and speaking no Russian.
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, senior editor In 2016, Ahmad phoned Grayzone Editor
Max Blumenthal unsolicited before Blumenthal published a two-part
investigative exposé on the Syrian White Helmets, threatening him with
severe consequences if he went ahead. (Listen to a recording of Ahmads
threatening call here). A lecturer on digital journalism at Stirling
University in the U.K., Ahmad recently attacked Democracy Now! for hosting
scholar Vijay Prashad for a discussion on the danger of a new Cold War with
China.
Rasha Al Aqeedi, senior analyst Iraq-born pundit who formerly worked as a
research fellow at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Research Institute
(FPRI), a neoconservative think tank originally founded by white
supremacists and Cold War hardliners that has honored Iraq war advocates
John Bolton and James Mattis. Like her colleague Ahmad, Aqeedi dedicates a
significant portion of her time to smearing anti-war figures on social
media.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, non-resident fellow Previously worked for a number of
neoconservative and establishment think tanks, including the Atlantic
Council, Foreign Policy Research Institute and Freedom House. Tsurkov served
in the Israeli military, during Israels 2006 war on Lebanon. Throughout the
Syrian proxy war, Tsurkov maintained friendly contacts with members of the
Saudi-backed jihadist militia, Jaish al-Islam, and boasted about links both
she and Israels military-intelligence apparatus maintained with Syrias
armed opposition.
Nicholas A. Heras, senior analyst Previously a research associate at the
U.S. Department of Defenses National Defense University, Heras is also a
fellow at the arms industry-funded Center for New American Security. There,
he proposed using wheat [as] a weapon of great power
to apply pressure on
the Assad regime. In other words, Heras advocated for the mass starvation
of Syrian civilians by occupying their wheat fields, a U.S. policy that is
currently underway in the countrys northeastern region.
Caroline Rose, senior analyst Previously served as an analyst at
Geopolitical Futures, headed by Stratfor founder, George Friedman. Stratfor
is a private spying and intelligence firm commonly referred to as a Shadow
CIA. It has contracted extensively with the U.S. government, and has
trained the radical wing of Venezuelas opposition and advised them on
destabilization tactics.
Robin Blackburn, managing editor For 12 years, Blackburn served as a
writer and editor with Stratfor.
Robert Inks, editor Previously served as director of the Writers Group and
special projects editor at Stratfor.
Daryl Johnson, non-resident fellow Served in the U.S. Army and previously
worked as a senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security. He is the
founder of DT Analytics, a private consulting firm for police and law
enforcement.
Eugene Chausovsky, non-resident fellow Lectures on the geopolitics of
Central Asia at the U.S. State Departments Foreign Service Institute.
Previously worked as Senior Eurasia Analyst at Stratfor for over a decade.
Imtiaz Ali, non-resident fellow Previously worked as a curriculum
specialist at the U.S. State Departments Foreign Service Institute.
Ahmed Alwani is the founder and president of the Newlines Institute. Alwani
previously served on the advisory board for the U.S. militarys Africa
Command (AFRICOM) and is the vice president of the International Institute
of Islamic Thought (IIIT); his father, Taha Jabir Al-Alwani was one of
IIITs founders.
Newlines Institute recently took steps to counter rumors of IIITs
connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. In an internal email obtained by The
Grayzone, dated Nov. 17, 2020, Newlines Director Hassan Hassan addressed the
accusation against the then-Center for Global Policy. Hassan wrote that
while a different older entity was funded by IIIT, [t]he current one has
no relation to IIIT. Hassan attempted to assuage concerns by downplaying
Alwanis connection to IIIT, claiming that Alwani inherited the
International Institute for Islamic Thought as Vice President as a sort of
legacy following his fathers death in 2018.
Overseen by Sham University
Newlines Institute is a branch of a disgraced educational institution that
has repeatedly violated state educational standards, raising further
questions about the quality of the think tanks work.
Newlines Institutes parent institution is Fairfax University of America
(FXUA), a school also founded and led by Alwani, and formerly known as
Virginia International University. FXUA is a private university in Fairfax,
Virginia. Founded in 1998, FXUAs short track record has been riddled with
numerous academic scandals and efforts by state regulators to shut the
institution down.
In 2019, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia initiated
proceedings to revoke FXUAs (then known as Virginia International
University) certificate to operate. The move came after state regulators
found widespread noncompliance with state educational standards.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, auditors determined that teachers
werent qualified to teach their assigned courses, the academic quality and
content of classes were patently deficient and student work was
characterized by rampant plagiarism that went unpunished.
Unqualified students regularly submit plagiarized or inferior work; faculty
turn a blind eye and lower grading standards (perhaps to avoid failing an
entire class); and administrators do not effectively monitor the quality of
online education being provided, the audit said.
That such substandard coursework could continue with no complaints from
students, faculty or administrators raises concerns about the purpose of
education at VIU [Virginia International University].
A review of Fairfax University/VIU by an anonymous employee.
Indeed, signs point to FXUA/VIU serving as a visa mill rather than a
legitimate educational institution. As Inside Higher Ed explains, the term
visa mill refers to a sham operation where an institution offers little
by way of educational value, but instead lures international students
through its ability to offer access to student and work visas, while
exploiting them by charging exorbitant tuition costs. FXUA/VIUs accreditor,
the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), has
long faced accusations of certifying such institutions.
In 2019, Inside Higher Ed reported that FXUA/VIUs appears to exist
primarily to enroll international students, finding that over the previous
five years, the percentage of students from North America varied between 1
and 3 percent. Auditors found that the student body was largely comprised
of international students with an abysmally poor command of the English
language. The students were charged $2,178 per graduate class and $1,266 per
undergraduate class to receive their patently deficient education.
Although Virginia International University reached an agreement with state
regulators that allowed it to continue operating and has rebranded itself as
Fairfax University of America, significant concerns remain about the
university, along with its subsidiary Newlines Institute.
Just days before Newlines Institutes report on China was released, its
FXUAs accreditation was once again in potential jeopardy. On March 5, an
advisory board to the U.S. Department of Education recommended terminating
recognition for ACICS. The National Advisory Committee on Institutional
Quality and Integrity voted 11-to-1 to recommend that ACICS lose the federal
recognition it needs to operate.
The advisory committee made the same recommendation in 2016, leading to the
ACICSs recognition being revoked under the Obama administration, before
recognition was restored to the troubled accreditor in 2018 by Trumps
secretary of education, the infamous privatization activist and oligarch
Betsy Devos.
Raoul Wallenberg Centre founder Irwin Cotler (L) with pro-Israel lawyer and
Wallenberg fellow Alan Dershowitz.
The Wallenberg Centre
Newlines Institute published its report in collaboration with The Raoul
Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. The reports principal author, Yonah
Diamond, is legal counsel for The Wallenberg Center, and many of the
reports signatories hold affiliations with the organization.
Based in Montreal, The Wallenberg Centre was founded by Irwin Cotler, former
minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. While often touted as a
human rights champion, Cotler is, in fact, a champion of the
responsibility to protect and humanitarian intervention doctrines,
regularly invoked by Western states in order to justify imperial
interventions in the global south.
Cotler routinely levels propagandistic accusations of human rights abuses,
atrocities, and genocide in service to Western imperialism, including
interventions in Libya, Syria, Iran and Venezuela, where Cotler served as
legal counsel for far-right, U.S.-backed Venezuelan coup leader Leopoldo
López. Lopezs wife, Lilian Tintori, holds an advisory position at The
Wallenberg Centre.
Cotler is also active in Haiti, serving as the minister of justice in the
Canadian administration that worked with the U.S. and France to help
overthrow former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. In 2014,
Cotler invited Maryam Rajavi, leader of the exiled Iranian MEK cult, to
speak on Canadas parliament hill. Four years later, he nominated U.S. and
U.K.-funded Syrian White Helmets for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Cotler is an ardent supporter of Israeli apartheid and longtime advisor to
Moshe Yaalon, former Israeli defense minister and chief of staff of the
Israeli military. Cotler has played a significant role in the Canadian
governments efforts to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and
smear the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for
Palestinian rights.
Cotler has long harbored hostile sentiments towards China. For a number of
years, Cotler served on the international legal team for Chinese
anti-government dissident Liu Xiaobo, a right-wing ideologue who called for
the privatization and Westernization of China, ardently supported former
President George W. Bush, and cheered on U.S. wars on Vietnam, Afghanistan,
and Iraq.
More recently, during the coronavirus pandemic, Cotler echoed calls of
right-wing U.S. lawmakers for international legal action and sanctions to
punish China for supposedly causing the coronavirus pandemic.
In its mission statement, the Wallenberg Centre outlines its right-wing,
Western imperial outlook in detail, explicitly identifying China, Venezuela,
Iran, and Russia as countries that it is pushing to combat with sanctions.
The Wallenberg Centre has become a haven for anti-China hawks, including
Senior Fellow David Kilgour and David Matas, senior legal counsel for Bnai
Brith Canada, a right-wing organization that describes itself as dedicated
to Israel advocacy.
Kilgour and Matas have extensive ties to the far-right, anti-China religious
cult Falun Gong. Both men are regularly contributors to the groups
propaganda arm, The Epoch Times, a media network that The New York Times has
described as an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire and leading purveyor
of right-wing misinformation. In 2019, an NBC News exposé found that The
Epoch Times spent over $1.5 million on approximately 11,000 pro-Trump
advertisements in just six months, more than any organization outside of
the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential
candidates have spent on their own campaigns.
In 2006, Kilgour and Matas were commissioned by Falun Gong to author a
report which made sensational accusations that the Chinese government was
secretly conducting a mass campaign of live organ harvesting Falun Gong
disciples. In 2017, an investigation by The Washington Post determined that
the claims made by Kilgour and Matas were unfounded, with experts commenting
that their allegations were not plausible and unthinkable.
As Washington advances its new Cold War strategy, it has amplified
accusations of genocide and other atrocities against the Chinese government,
all focused on Beijings policy in Xinjiang. To broaden support for the
dubious narrative, the U.S. government has turned to a series of
pseudo-academic institutions and faux experts to generate seemingly serious
and independent studies.
Any critical probe of the reams of reports on Xinjiang and the hawkish
institutions that publish them will quickly reveal a shabby propaganda
campaign dressed up as academic inquiry. Western medias refusal to look
beneath the surface of Washingtons information war against China only
highlights its central role in the operation.
Ajit Singh is a lawyer and journalist. He is a contributing author to
Keywords in Radical Philosophy and Education: Common Concepts for
Contemporary Movements (Brill: 2019). He tweets at @ajitxsingh.
This article is from The Grayzone.