The World Uighur Congress has asked Barrister Geoffrey Nice, who previously led the prosecution of ex-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic over the Balkans war, to investigate “ongoing atrocities and possible genocide” against the Uighur people in China's Xinjiang region.

A prominent British human rights lawyer is convening an independent tribunal in London to investigate whether the Chinese government's alleged rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in the far western Xinjiang region constitute genocide or crimes against humanity.

The tribunal is expected to reveal new evidence and testimony over several days' hearings next year. While the tribunal does not have government backing, it is the latest attempt to hold China accountable for its treatment of the Uighurs and ethnic Turkic minorities, who have been subject to an unprecedented crackdown since 2017.

Barrister Geoffrey Nice, who previously led the prosecution of ex-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic over the Balkans war and worked with the International Criminal Court, was asked by the World Uighur Congress to investigate "ongoing atrocities and possible genocide" against the Uighur people.

Allegations against China about potential genocide are "questions that should be asked and answered" but such claims have never been legally scrutinized in public, Nice told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Organizers are in the initial stages of gathering evidence, and expect to receive a substantial number of submissions from Uighurs exiled abroad over the next few months. New evidence that may emerge includes testimony from several former security guards who were involved in the Xinjiang detention camps.

"At the moment, the strongest evidence would appear to be evidence of incarceration and possibly evidence of enforced sterilization," Nice said.

A recent investigation by the AP found that the Chinese government is systematically forcing birth control on Uighurs and other Muslims in an apparent effort to reduce their population. The report found that authorities regularly subject minority women to pregnancy checks and force intrauterine devices, sterilization and abortion on hundreds of thousands. While scores have been thrown in detention camps for alleged "religious extremism," many others were sent to the camps simply for having too many children.

Such enforced sterilization practices could be found to breach the Genocide Convention, Nice said.

The London tribunal's judgment is not binding on any government. However, Nice said that the process will nonetheless be one way to address the lack of action in tackling the alleged abuses by "filling the gap with reliable information."

"There is no other way of bringing the leadership of the (Chinese) Communist Party collectively or individually to judgment," Nice said.

In July, lawyers representing exiled Uighur activists filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court against China, asking the court in The Hague, Netherlands, to investigate the forced repatriation of thousands of Uighurs from Cambodia and Tajikistan and alleged genocide in Xinjiang.

However, Beijing does not recognize the international court's jurisdiction, and Nice — who is not involved in that case — said it will likely focus more on the repatriating countries' culpability and less on that of Chinese authorities.

The World Uighur Congress, an international organization representing Uighur exiles, has provided initial evidence and funding to the London tribunal. Organizers expect to hold two public hearings in London next year, each lasting several days.

The tribunal will comprise of at least seven members who will act as jury. They include British property businessman Nicholas Vetch, one of the organizers. A verdict is expected by the end of 2021.

Darren Byler, an academic studying Uighurs at the University of Colorado, said that, despite its limitations, the tribunal is an important step because it can provide a "detailed and legal accounting of what has transpired," and add perspective to the prevailing U.S.-centric reaction to the issue.

"So far the world response to what is happening to the Uighurs and Kazakhs in Northwest China has been largely confined to unilateral actions by the United States and been associated with President Trump's more general anti-China position. An independent investigation conducted from outside of the U.S. will be helpful in adding an additional perspective," Byler said.

In July the Trump administration imposed sanctions on three senior Chinese Communist Party officials for alleged human rights abuses targeting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and other minorities in Xinjiang, including mass detention and forced population control./AP

PARIS

Rwandan genocide mastermind Felicien Kabuga went before the French supreme court on Wednesday requesting an appeal of the body's decision to hand him over to international judges in Tanzania.

Kabuga, 84, was arrested in May 16 at his home in the Paris suburb of Asnieres-sur-Seine for his role as the alleged financier of the 1994 genocide that left over half a million to just over a million people killed.

Kabuga was also a part of the inner circle of former President Juvenal Habyarimana whose assassination ignited the carnage.

Currently in prison in Paris, Kabuga will learn of the court's decision by Sept. 30.

In 1997, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda -- based in Tanzania -- had charged Kabuga with seven counts of genocide and multiple other counts as well as "persecution and extermination, all in connection with crimes committed during the 1994 genocide."

A reward of $5 million was placed on Kabuga's head by the International Mechanism, the structure responsible for completing the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

In June, the Paris Appeal Court ruled on an extradition request that would hand over the accused to the UN Tribunal in Arusha, in eastern Tanzania.

A fugitive for 26 years who had a warrant out for his arrest, Kabuga took refuge in the suburbs of Paris under a false identity after earlier hideouts in Switzerland, from where he was expelled, and Kenya.

He has been called Africa's most wanted man and one of the most wanted fugitives in the world.

Kabuga has cited ill health as a reason for his request to be tried in France as well as concerns over his safety during the coronavirus pandemic./aa

ANKARA

Turkey on Wednesday strongly condemned the Charlie Hebdo magazine for republishing cartoons insulting Islam and Prophet Muhammad.

In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said it is not possible to justify this insult and disrespect toward Muslims by saying it is freedom of the press, art or expression.

Aksoy said the attitude of the French authorities, especially President Emmanuel Macron, to dismiss the incident under the pretext of freedom of expression is also "unacceptable".

“At every opportunity, those who define themselves as democrat and liberal are serving the new generation of fascists and racists in France and Europe by using such racist and discriminatory actions that increase anti-Islamism and xenophobia,” he said.

Aksoy said this "pathetic mentality," which attempts to otherize millions of Muslims living in peace deals a blow to social harmony, unity and equality every day.

"Those who are unconsciously doing this should be aware that they are harming societal peace," he added.

Turkey urged politicians and European allies to take a clear stand against such attacks which are on the rise and hurt Muslim sentiments, he concluded./aa

ANKARA

Germany has found “unequivocal” evidence that a nerve agent was used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny last month, local media reported Wednesday. 

In tests run by a special German military laboratory, signs of "a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok party" were found, Steffen Seiber, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, said in a statement.

The nerve agent Novichok was also used in the 2018 poisoning of ex-Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury in an attack by Russian intelligence, according to the UK government.

German doctors at a clinic where the opposition leader is being treated announced last week that Navalny had been poisoned.

Navalny is currently in intensive care in a medically induced coma. His condition is serious, but there is no acute danger to his life, say his doctors.

Navalny, 44, a vociferous critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on Aug. 20 on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and Navalny was rushed to a hospital, where he spent two days before being sent to Berlin for treatment.

Commenting on the incident, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said they were waiting for test results before launching an investigation./aa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday said the Justice Department was monitoring the protest movement antifa, saying that it is at the heart of violence in cities around the country.

"I've talked to every police chief in every city where there has been major violence and they all have identified antifa as the ramrod for the violence," Barr said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "They are flying around the country. We know people who are flying around the country."

"We see some of the purchases they are making before the riots of weapons to use in those riots," Barr added. "So, we are following them."

Antifa is a largely unstructured, far-left movement whose followers broadly aim to confront those they view as authoritarian or racist.

Republican President Donald Trump, who has been trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, has been appealing to his base of white supporters with a "law and order" message. In a visit Tuesday to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 17-year-old Trump supporter has been charged with killing two people during protests following the police shooting of a Black man in the back, Trump said the destruction that occurred was "really domestic terror."

Barr on Wednesday also said he thought there was no systemic racism in the U.S. justice system, and that there is a "false narrative" that the country is in an "epidemic" of unarmed Black people being killed by white police officers.

"I think our institutions have been reformed in the past 60 years and if anything has been built into it it's a bias toward non-discrimination," Barr said.

In a Fox News interview late on Monday, Trump said an investigation was under way into alleged “thugs” who boarded a plane seeking to cause damage last week during the Republican Party convention, without providing details or evidence.

Law enforcement, intelligence and Congressional officials familiar with official reporting on weeks of protests and related arrests said on Tuesday they were aware of no incidents or reports that would confirm Trump’s anecdote.

Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that threatens to cut federal funding to "lawless" cities, including Seattle, Portland, New York and Washington.

"My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones," said the memo, which was released by the White House.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Twitter that the memo was an "illegal stunt."

China’s abuse of Uighur Muslims is finally getting some much-needed global attention, with reports of millions herded into political-reeducation camps that recall history’s worst atrocities. Now, a groundbreaking new report by Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, reveals that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been systematically targeting Uighur women in a draconian birth-control campaign.

Chinese officials have been ruthless in their pursuit of limiting new Uighur births. Uighur women are subjected to forced pregnancy checks, medication that stops their menstruation, forced abortions, and surgical sterilizations.

The Chinese government has a long history of perpetrating such horrors on its own citizens. The “one-child policy” was infamously enforced, before eventually being loosened at the end of 2015 to allow couples to legally conceive two children. But even as the CCP regime was easing reproductive restrictions on Han Chinese, it was drastically increasing systematic control of Uighur women in Xinjiang, a province in Western China. Since 2017, the CCP has systematically detained over 1.8 million Uighur Muslims in “political reeducation” camps, and used them for forced labor.

Zenz’s research reveals that birth-control violations are punishable by extrajudicial internment in “training” camps, and evidence from the leaked “Karakax List” document states that such violations were the most common reason for internment. According to Zenz’s report, “in 2014, 2.5 percent of newly placed IUDs [intrauterine birth-control devices] in China were fitted in Xinjiang. In 2018, that share rose to 80 percent, far above Xinjiang’s 1.8 percent share of China’s population. Between 2015 and 2018, Xinjiang placed 7.8 times more new IUDs per capita than the national average.”

A Uighur woman reported that in 2018, she was offered “free” surgical sterilization and threatened with internment if she refused. According to her Uighur doctor, her fallopian tubes were cut in the resulting tubal-ligation procedure, making her sterilization irreversible — a common experience for Xinjiang’s minorities.

China’s goal, it seems, is to eradicate future generations of Uighurs by maliciously and ruthlessly controlling Uighur reproduction. This, in itself, is nothing new. The Chinese Communist Party has waged a long and dreadful war against women, more specifically against baby girls. Through the coercion of the one- and two-child policies, it created a gender imbalance as stark as 120 boys for every 100 girls. Families in China often had to seek the approval of local family-planning officials just to have a child, even if they hadn’t already reached the one-child cutoff. To meet quotas and restrict population growth, women were subject to forced abortions, and men and women to forced sterilizations.

Where the CCP applied the one- and two-child policies relatively equally, however, the Uighurs are being targeted for their membership in a particular religious and ethnic group, making their mistreatment even more pernicious.

On July 2, after Zenz’s report was released, members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, noting as much, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arguing that the U.S. may have grounds to publicly and formally declare an atrocity to be occurring. They claim that forced sterilization and forced abortion constitute attempts by the CCP to limit, and maybe even eventually exterminate, the Uighur population.

Limiting births on the basis of membership in a particular group may be enough to prove the CCP’s intent to commit genocide against the Uighurs — a legal standard that must be met in order for Pompeo to take such a step. Furthermore, officials responsible for human-rights violations against Uighurs may be subject to targeted sanctions like the ones now being applied to senior CCP official Chen Quanguo. As the architect of the surveillance state that made it possible for over 1 million Uighurs to be held in reeducation camps, as well as for similar rights violations in Tibet, Chen is finally facing repercussions for his actions. He and three other CCP officials were sanctioned just last month. Other officials responsible for the injustices uncovered by Zenz may be similarly vulnerable to sanctions.

Secretary Pompeo should establish a new position within the Department of State to coordinate the U.S.’s diplomatic, political, and legal response to the gross violations of universally recognized human rights in Xinjiang. This person would play a similar role to that of the Special Coordinator for Tibet and would ensure that the U.S. government is responding as effectively as possible to the crisis in Xinjiang.

China’s draconian and systematic abuse of Uighur women must be stopped, and the global community should boldly call on the Chinese Communist Party to end its persecution of Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in China altogether. Any holistic strategy to meet the challenges the CCP’s actions increasingly pose to the world has to be built on a strong moral foundation, and speaking up strongly and clearly for the Uighurs is the right place to start.