We promised to "never forget," and we prayed "never again." But such massive killings have occurred a number of times since the Holocaust. It can happen anywhere in many ways.
A government can inflict a famine on its own people. China saw tens of millions die in its Great Leap Forward. The granaries were full, but families were kept from eating on pain of death in order to show the desired grain surplus. Venezuela's government today has inflicted such suffering on its people. Their one salvation has been their ability to leave. It can come from simple mistreatment of a segregated population by governments and even individuals, as our ancestors inflicted on Native Americans and African Americans. It can be a semi-official policy, as Sudan did in Darfur and Myanmar is committing against the Rohingya. Part of that was Burmese officials identifying the Rohingya as "illegal aliens," which should give us cause for pause. It can come about during wartime as a gruesome sort of expedient, as we have seen with the Islamic State and in Yemen over the past decade. It can sweep a country like a craze, as Hutus inflicted upon Tutsis in Rwanda.
And it can be a deliberately planned and executed effort to eliminate an ethnic or religious identity, as Nazis did during the Holocaust. That is what Xi Jinping's China is inflicting on non-Chinese ethnicities today. One tragedy can never take away from another, but as Jews remembering our relatives who perished or survived in the Holocaust, we should be particularly sensitive to this ultimate, cold-blooded form of genocide.
Xi Jinping has deliberately targeted predominantly Muslim populations living on China's periphery. Over the last 12 years or so, Uyghur extremists have indeed committed a very limited number terrorist attacks. Xi doesn't care about these, other than as an excuse to imprison millions of these peoples. His reason is not to prevent terrorism, the threat of which was eliminated years ago, but because these populations do not consider themselves Chinese. They are Turkic peoples, predominantly Uyghur but including Kazakhs, Kyrgiz, and others who at various times have established their own independent country, East Turkistan. For centuries, China has attempted to absorb Turkistan, which it now calls the "Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region," "Xinjiang" meaning "new province." This separate identity is East Turkistan's heritage, who they are. They could no more deny it than we would deny our own heritage or nationality. No one should ever have to.
To wipe out East Turkistani identity, Xi has turned the entire countryside into a ghetto where all live under constant, intimate surveillance. The People's Republic punishes any display of Turkistani religion or culture (public or private). Parents are incarcerated en masse and the children sent to orphanages to be raised as Han Chinese. Communist Party officials live and bed with families. The state forces Turkistani women to be sterilized. No one leaves and no one talks to the outside.
And where are the parents sent? We know that the camps practice re-education, forced labor, and torture. Beyond that is anyone's guess. We must assume Beijing has a "good" reason for not revealing it. Know as well that Beijing is expanding its program of ethnic "assimilation" or elimination to ever broader swathes of China.
German scholar Adrian Zenz has led the way in understanding what the People's Republic is doing (although he is not alone). In July 2020 he wrote, "Since 2017, up to 1.8 million Uighurs, Kazaks, and other Turkic minority groups in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang have been swept up in what is probably the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust." This is based on his extensive research of available PRC sources, many of which have since been taken offline. We should remember that there is no independent verification of PRC statistics. In 2019, a U.S. defense official speculated that up to three million Turkistanis could be imprisoned.
The Chinese state has lied repeatedly, claiming the concentration camps are simply job training centers and even that all the prisoners have been sent home. As a nuclear power, the People's Republic feels safe indeed against any invasion and impervious to any moral appeal. Of course we should do something to resist it, but the hard fact is that the Chinese economy has penetrated and permeated our own to such a degree that complete decoupling will be impossible for some time to come. Many companies are making a great deal of money and do not want to decouple. I would list some of them, but there are too many and we shouldn't just focus on the most famous examples. It should be obvious to them all - if only for the fact that any product from China may very well have been produced through slave labor - that continued trade with China is no longer morally sustainable.
The hard question is always "What can I do?" We are told "If not me, who?" and "If not now, when?" We are told to act with intent, enthusiasm, and haste. We personally write to raise awareness and we give money and time. But let's admit it, it may be that every individual can't do that much. Maybe there were Germans who worried about their Jewish neighbors too, and maybe they couldn't do that much. That's certainly what the oppressors hope.
If we could stop it, we would stop it now. If we could fight it head on, we would fight it. If we can bring people together in opposition, we'll do it today. If we can simply call it out, we will call. And if the workings of the enemy have left us so little power that even our own tongues are turned against us, we can still remember and not forget, waiting for the hour to speak the truth once more.
But that is not this day or this country. Even as we think of those we've lost in this pandemic, we are still blessed with freedom and plenty. It lures us into complacency. It can be hard to grasp that there's such a person as Xi Jinping who commits such crimes across the ocean. But the information we have - from scholars, media, and from Xi's own regime - tells us the opposite. So I ask you today simply to remember. If you happen to be in a position to point out Beijing's genocide, do so. If you see PRC influence - for example claiming there is no genocide - point it out. If you can speak with those in power, ask them what they can do, what they are doing. Otherwise, please remember and believe that the day is coming soon when we will have the means to end this tyranny and genocide.
Finally, remember that this is about Xi's totalitarian regime. It has nothing at all to do with Chinese ethnicity or Asian heritage. These groups are under attack by bigots and racists in our own country and we should fight hard to ensure all are safe and all are welcome, at home and abroad.