Uyghur activists on Monday again called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate genocide in China against the ethnic minority group and have demanded that Chinese President Xi Jinping be arrested for his alleged crimes.
The call came just days after the ICC on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his role in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children and forced relocation to Russia.
Activists from the East Turkistan government in exile, which is a parliamentary-based exiled government located in Washington, D.C., along with the East Turkistan National Movement, have called on the ICC to hold Xi to the same account as Putin.
The international court has repeatedly rejected fillings that called on it to investigate reports of forced relocations within the Xinjiang province, arbitrary arrests, detentions in concentration camps, medical experimentation and various human rights abuses, including genocide, against the Uyghur ethnic minority group.
The court has claimed that it does not have jurisdiction in China to investigate the alleged crimes as Beijing is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the court in 1998.
However, previous fillings have rejected these claims and pointed to ICC investigations against abuses committed against Rohingya minorities in Myanmar – which does not recognize ICC authority – who field to Bangladesh, which is an ICC signatory.
Parallels have been drawn to Uyghur populations that have fled to ICC-friendly nations like Tajikistan, which borders the Xinjiang province, though Tajikistan has been accused of deporting Uyghurs back to China.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia are state parties of the Rome Statute, but according to a spokesman for the ICC the court was able to go after Russian human rights abuses because Ukraine accepted its jurisdiction to investigate such crimes.
“As a court the ICC has jurisdiction over certain categories of crimes if they are committed on the territories or by citizens of a State that is party to the ICC Rome Statute or has accepted the ICC jurisdiction (like Ukraine which have declared accepting the ICC jurisdiction), which is not the case for China, or upon a referral by the United Nations Security Council,” Fadi El Abdallah, a court spokesperson, told Fox News Digital.
He added that “the ICC has no jurisdiction over the alleged crimes” China has been accused of.
Genocide, if proven, is also deemed illegal under international law as defined by the U.N. charter.
“We call on the International Criminal Court to act and hold Chinese leader Xi Jinping accountable for the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples,” Prime Minister Salih Hudayar of the East Turkistan government in exile said in a statement.
“The International Criminal Court must uphold justice and fulfill its commitment to ‘Never Again’ by investigating the ongoing genocide and arresting Xi Jinping for his direct role in this Holocaust-like genocide in the 21st century,” he added.
