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The first sentence does not make sense

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The question that's really being asked by the available options, and the one which is being answered in the discussion, is whether the events may be called a genocide in wikivoice. That is, whether the article should call it a genocide as a matter of fact, verses an opinion (even a widely held one). Option A says yes, option B/B2 say no (with the only difference between them being effectively a copyedit, which is better handled through another smaller discussion), and option C says no but goes further and attributes the label to "Western academics". Hence, this close will address that question head-on, rather than necessarily trying to judge which particular sentence structure has the most support.

I'll begin by restating the policy and principles that guide my reading of this discussion. The policy underpinning this discussion is WP:WIKIVOICE. The following bullets are so imperative that I will quote them here:

  • Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action" but may state that "genocide has been described by John So-and-so as the epitome of human evil."
  • Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.
  • Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.

The question we're left with is whether there exists a serious debate in reliable sources as to whether these events are a genocide. If yes, then it would be inappropriate to use the term "genocide" as an uncontested fact. If no, then it would be inappropriate to treat it as an opinion or otherwise make it seem contested.

Analysis:

The evidence provided by the supporters largely came down to the sources provided by Mhawk10. Some were non-English, and there was an unaddressed concern about evaluating those accurately, but on the whole editors were happy that at least a large amount of scholars and reliable sources argued or labelled the events as a genocide.

Many opposing editors provided academic sources and HQRS which either disagree with the term being applicable, state there exists a scholarly dispute as to whether the actions are a genocide, or attribute their use of the term. Some of these sources included statements by academics who personally argue that the actions constitute a genocide but, in some academic publications, appear to acknowledge the existence of a dispute over applying the label (eg Pincrete's unrebutted comment here). The supporters did successfully rebut some of these arguments, usually by questioning their reliability or the age of provided sources, however the strongest points and sources do not appear to be rebutted. This is reflected in the final half-dozen-or-so latest comments, by editors who certainly had the opportunity to judge the totality of the debate, and these were largely a wave of Option B/B2 supporters.

In light of these facts, it's very difficult to say the supporters have successfully argued and managed to convince their peers that there exists no serious dispute in RS, such that the term 'genocide' may be used as an uncontested fact.

I note there is clearly opposition against attributing to "Western academics" (option C). Some editors pointed out that non-Western academics and international organisations have also used the same label, for example.

Conclusions:

  • There exists a serious debate in reliable sources as to whether the events/actions are a genocide.
  • The events/actions may not be labelled as a genocide in wikivoice, that is, as an uncontested fact.
  • Opening sentence: This close does not try to deal with the minor copyedit issues, nor suggest that the prose implemented by this RfC is the best possible prose and cannot be improved further. This allows for more flexibility in less contentious future improvements, noting that this RfC came about initially due to a grammatical concern with the opening sentence. As such, this decision does not make any prescriptions on the opening sentence specifically, other than those above, and that the opening sentence may not attribute the label to a group as narrow as "Western academics".

With that said, I'm implementing the prose of option B1 as the prose that meets the criteria laid out above, and addresses the original concern held with the original prose (noting that there was minimal support for option E), with no prejudice against changing it to B2 or another 'option D' variant that meets the above criteria, via the normal editing processes.

Finally, I'd like to extend my thanks to all participants for the exceptionally high quality of discussion. There was a good search for, and debate over, discussions within reliable sources, which are the hallmarks of a good consensus-based discussion. I'm happy to answer any requests for clarification on my user talk. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:52, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

The lead sentence says that "The Uyghur genocide is the characterization of the [ongoing abuses] as genocide." This is a circular sentence, and it seems like a classical case of confusing the use and mention of a term.

Now, I understand that the classification of something as genocide is complicated. By naming the article it seems we have, for now, decided that "genocide" is the most neutral or correct or standard way to describe what is happening to the Uyighurs. Judging from the section "Classification of abuses", which elaborates on the naming debate, this seems solid, again, for now.

The present article "Uyighur genocide" is obviously mainly about the abuse and persecution of Uyighurs, not about the classification issue. By saying that the Uyghur genocide is the characterization as a genocide we have a very contrived first sentece which really says that the main subject of the article is a terminological dispute. The Uyighur genocide is an ongoing series of abuses against Uyighurs. And, we could add, the characterization of these abuses as "genocide" is controversial. Then at least we would not bend over backwards to avoid using the title of the article to refer to its subject, which really should be frowned upon. ——St.nerol (talk) 19:08, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not ongoing and basically everything the genoiced advocates claim are lies. This is an Iraq/WMD-style propaganda campaign. For example, China released the prisoners in early 2019, as you can see in this article (search text for "87.5 percent"): https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/
For the full story see my post above. Laroop (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Nice misrepresentation there, the following sentences say: "Release verdicts often state that a person first has to complete what is evidently a minimum one-year study period before they should then be released. It is important to keep in mind that “re-education internment” for all of these main persons exclusively refers to internment in VTICs. These camps will intern persons for designated periods of time before releasing them into either community control (社区管控) or, more commonly, forms of forced labor. In fact, a number of verdicts bluntly state that persons are to be released into “industrial park employment” (园区就业). Jr8825 • Talk 23:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Naming an article using a disputed term is always going to result in problems of phrasing. Normally one would expect an article with this title to be about the claim that the Chinese government is committing genocide in Xinjiang. TFD (talk) 05:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I endorse what St.nerol says. Present text is very unclear as to whether the subject of the article is the abuses against the Uyghurs, or whether the subject is some academic/legal/naming dispute about how to classify those abuses. I understand the compromises that have lead to this point, but, the outcome is a pig's ear I'm afraid. Pincrete (talk) 10:26, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
How about this: "The Uyghur genocide is the the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, which is variously characterized as a genocide[1], a cultural genocide[2] or a crime against humanity[3]." (with suitable references inserted). ––St.nerol (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
We can't say "The Uyghur genocide... is variously characterized as a genocide, cultural genocide, or a crime against humanity" because then we are picking one in wikivoice. It wouldn't be "variously characterized" here, it would just be characterized as genocide. BSMRD (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Okay, but every time we refer to what's happening we inevitably have to pick one characterization, right? Would it work better with "The Uyghur genocide is [...] in Xinjiang. It has also been characterized as a cultural genocide or a crime against humanity"? ––St.nerol (talk) 12:29, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I completely agree the current sentence is awkward, but I don't think there's any way around the problem other than changing the article title, which isn't going to happen. (Edit: sorry, I forgot about the avoidbold option as it involves overturning the last RfC, but I think this is a good alternative, see below. Jr8825 • Talk 12:35, 25 January 2022 (UTC)) Starting off with "the Uyghur Genocide is X abuses" and then using "also characterised" suggests 1) the characterisation of genocide is broadly accepted, and 2) possibly that other labels are simply terms used in addition to genocide, rather than the labels preferred by those who disagree with, or cautious about, terming it genocide. I'm sure you can find alternative phrasing that makes your proposed text more explicit/clearer, but then you'll end up with a longer, more convoluted first couple of sentences, and I'm not sure it'll be any more elegant than the current wording. Also, I'm not keen on exploring the views of those who don't think it's a genocide in the first few sentences, as I think it distracts from the substance of the topic and actually has the unintended effect of placing more doubt on the abuses than necessary. Unfortunately, this has all been pointed out several times before and a clear majority of regular page editors are against a title change (repeated failed attempts at changing the title are pointed to as justification for keeping the current one). You're not the first new editor to come along and point out the current situation doesn't work well, but it's probably the best compromise available as we have to work from community consensus. I can live with it myself, because although I think the title's not strictly within policy, I'm sympathetic to why editors want to keep it, and the first sentence is probably the best that can be done with it. Jr8825 • Talk 23:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Of all possible policy-violations-as-a-result-of-compromise, logical incoherence might be my least favourite. So I'll give another try. How about: "The Uyghur genocide is the ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, if characterized as a genocide." ––St.nerol (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Another option is not having the title bolded in the first sentence at all per MOS:AVOIDBOLD. Something like The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide. – Anne drew 22:12, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
I agree with this version by @Anne drew, I don't think we should bend over backwards to have the bolded title, and this is an accurate summary in my opinion. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 15:22, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
I argued in favour of something similar at the previous RfC on the lead sentence for pretty much the same reasons as St.nerols, but the closer found a consensus in favour of the current lead sentence instead. I also think that dropping the bolding would be a better option, but there may be opposition as it will involve overturning that RfC outcome. My suggested formulation would be similar, starting with "Since 2014, the Chinese government has... (moving "since 2014" from the current second sentence, which was originally the first sentence). There's an explanatory supplement of MOS:AVOIDBOLD at WP:BOLDITIS, which clarifies that bolding the title shouldn't be done if it compromises on a natural first sentence outlining the article scope. I don't think St.nerols' suggestion here is better than the current sentence. Jr8825 • Talk 22:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
I am not sure what the best alternative is, but I totally agree the first sentence doesn't make any sense as it is now and it is more confusing than informative. Vpab15 (talk) 12:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
A mass ping to previous RfC participants might be good to gauge the level of opposition to a new lead sentence. If there's not much disagreement it might be possible to change it without needing a new RfC. Jr8825 • Talk 12:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
I support an explanatory first sentence without bolding like the one @Anne drew Andrew and Drew: and @Jr8825: suggest. Perhaps the part "has commited a series of ongoing human rights abuses" could just be shortened to "is committing human rights abuses"? But I guess details can always be honed once we agree on the type of solution we want. I have no idea about how to mass ping people, but open to see how it's done! ––St.nerol (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Just to drop in and add my two cents; Agree with User:St.nerol's original sentiment that the lede sentence as it stands is horribly circular and tautological. A simple and quick fix would just be to remove the repetition of "genocide" (i.e. "The Uyghur genocide is a term used to describe a series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang.") NickCT (talk) 18:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Against current sentence "the Uyghur genocide is the characterization of the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang as genocide" on these points (1) characterization is not the article's focus although important, (2) "as genocide" at end redundant when it opens with "genocide", (3) it's "mainly Uyghurs" just say so instead of tying-in unspecified minorities, (4) probably unintentional but the word "ongoing" excludes past abuses, "a series of" suffices as current situation is adequately covered. Support AVOIDBOLD as a means to reach a more natural, neutral, and accurate first sentence. CurryCity (talk) 21:18, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
@CurryCity: Would The Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang satisfy your concerns? — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:22, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
@Mhawk10: Why not, The allegations of oppression of the Uighur ethnic group, that some Western academics have characterized as a genocide, constitute a series of alleged human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang? — 141.156.196.94 (talk) 08:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
141.156.196.94, immediate response? - Far too many 'alleged's. There is near universal agreement that large scale human rights abuses are occurring. The exact scale, including the extent to which coercive medical interventions, such as forced abortion/sterilisation may be unestablished/able, and how best to characterise this programme may all be uncertain/unagreed, but no serious source doubts that a programme of oppression exists. Pincrete (talk) 11:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Disagree with this version, as it needlessly waters down the genocide as existing only in the minds of the west. When actually our sources indicate the belief that this is a serious set of abuses (often called a cultural genocide) is much wider than just Western academics. It's also from politicians, human rights watchdog groups, the UN HRC, etc. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 15:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
The idea that what's occurring in Xinjiang is a "cultural genocide" overloads the term genocide such that the belief *does* exist only in the minds of the West. We could just as easily say "cultural erasure" and this talk page would be empty. Pure propaganda. 141.156.196.94 (talk) 06:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

RfC: First Sentence

What changes should be made to the first sentence of this article?

  • Option A: Change the first sentence to The Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang.
  • Option B: Change the first sentence to "The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide."
  • Option B2 Change the first sentence to "Since 2014, the Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide."
  • Option C: Change the first sentence to The allegations of oppression of the Uighur ethnic group, that some Western academics have characterized as a genocide, constitute a series of alleged human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang
  • Option D: Replace the current first sentence with some other descriptive sentence.
  • Option E: Leave the first sentence as-is.

— Mhawk10 (talk) 20:49, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey: First Sentence

  • A or B, in that order. The first sentence is plainly the most clear way to convey what the subject of this article is: the human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and religious minorities in Xinjiang. This is generally how the topic is defined among academics and the mainstream press, as shown in what I am collapsing below for the sake of readability. The first sentence of the lead should reflect that. I prefer the bolded version (Option A) because it is more direct than the alternative proposed by Anne drew Andrew and Drew, but both are acceptable to me(Update at 03:43, 4 February 2022 (UTC): the arguments from WP:YESPOV given below convince me that Option B is not great, either. We need to call this what the sources call it and Option A does that best). Option C is the least preferable, since it both hand-waves excessively over well-documented and flagrant human rights abuses and confuses the main topic of the article (the abuses) with a mere characterization.
Academic and mainstream press sources

Notes

  1. ^ Note that this is a piece from the news desk explaining that the New Yorker had translated the below piece into Mandarin
— Mhawk10 (talk) 03:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC) (last updated: 05:48, 4 February 2022 (UTC))
How do editors evaluate non-English sources (above) here on English WP? CurryCity (talk) 05:57, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B2 / B, not A: WP:AVOIDBOLD or at least not bolding the first phrase makes sense here. Some concerns addressed below. Ongoing may be interpreted as excluding past transgressions or become obsolete, so should be left out. Has been committing suffices to indicate events occuring over time. I disagree with the inclusion of other ethnic and religious minorities in the first sentence because it's vague, and whether those populations can be lumped in under the genocide characterization is different from the case for Uyghurs. Suggest the Chinese government has been committing a series of human rights abuses against mainly Uyghurs in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide for the first sentence. CurryCity (talk) 21:29, 30 January 2022 (UTC) (updated 23:06, 2 February 2022 (UTC))
    The purposse of ongoing is that it indicates that the topic is the current (i.e. ongoing) series of human rights abuses, starting in 2014. When the abuses end, it would be trivial to remove "ongoing". — Mhawk10 (talk) 22:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    So you mean any abuse not ongoing (before 2014) is not part of this article? CurryCity (talk) 01:50, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
    The initial point of this article was that it was a class project about the Chinese abuses against Uyghurs (my classmates and I initially titled the page something like "Ethnocide of Uyghurs in China" when the page was created, which was before all of the forced sterilization stuff came out). There's a long history of China oppressing Uyghurs that extends to before the creation of the PRC. We obviously don't want to include that information in this article in anywhere but the background section, since it isn't really useful in describing the more recent abuses and most scholars see the more recent abuses as something that's been very different in size, scope, and method from the prior abuses. Some place this sort of shift in the abuses against Uyghurs as beginning at the 2009 Urumqi riots, but the general consensus is that the particular series of abuses that this article is about started around 2014 (following the launch of the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism) and that the Uyghur human rights situation rapidly deteriorated after Chen Quanguo became the XUAR party secretary in 2016 and ordered the creation of the massive-scale Xinjiang internment camps and the Civil Servant-Family Pair Up.
    So, I guess to more directly answer the question, the events between June/July 2009 and April 2014 are a bit more fuzzy in terms of whether or not they're in scope, but something in like the mid-to-late-1900s is almost certainly not in scope anywhere except the background section. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • B (first choice), or A(second choice). Can't answer about D without a specific proposal. C is absurd, and E is only slightly better. It's oppression, documented by approximately one zillion sources, as shown above. So "allegation of oppression" is absurd. I don't much like "the characterization of", which is the current wording. It's just strange wording. Not sure where that is in policy. Limiting the characterization to "Western Academics" is also wrong. What do the Uighurs say about it? Adoring nanny (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Just a note that I don't mind A at all. With NickCT's suggestion below, I think it becomes just as good as B. I will scream bloody murder if this is closed as C or E. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Just a note to say I'll be screaming with you. NickCT (talk) 14:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A - I'd prefer "The Uyghur genocide is a term used to describe the series......", but A is good enough I guess. B is overly editorial. Doesn't seem like Wikipedia voice. C is both editorial and poorly written. NickCT (talk) 17:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
    I missed this suggestion. It's a compromise I can get behind. I'm not sure it resolves the concerns of editors who feel the current problem with the sentence is its focus on nomenclature, though. Jr8825 • Talk 20:22, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A > B > D > all others. A is the most succinct and best summarizes our sources, but B is also acceptable if we prefer not to call it a genocide in Wikipedia's voice. – Anne drew 19:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • B or D We should not label something a genocide unless there is consensus in reliable sources. Also, the current reading is confusing because for the average person, because the term to most people means "the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group." (Merriam-Webster)[1] TFD (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
MW lists as the specific definition "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group" which would seem to fit the current situation perfectly. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:40, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
One of the debates is whether a group is being destroyed. CurryCity (talk) 21:55, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
You mean it fits one interpretation of the current situation perfectly. In any case, I assume that you would agree that the meaning of the term to most people would be killing people. If a different meaning is used, it should be explained in text, per Technical language. Also, could you please take your opinions to the discussion section below. This section is for the survey and your repeated arguments with editors is distracting to contributors. TFD (talk) 00:49, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
We could probably use an "Introduction to Genocide" article, also we have WP:RS reports of people being deliberately killed. What we don't have is reports of mass killings but per the meaning you provided apparently "mass" is not part of the common meaning. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Could you please take your opinions to the discussion section below. This section is for the survey and your repeated arguments with editors is distracting to contributors. I will not reply to your questions here because I don't want to be part of the problem. TFD (talk) 14:06, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
TFD, as has been explained to you multiple times thats just not how it works. Either point to a consensus or stop being disruptive. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
No it hasn't been explained to me. Why do you think there is a discussion section in the RfC? (Rhetorical question.) Anyone coming to vote here would have to wade through walls of text explaining your views. It's not as if these views are unfamiliar to editors familiar with the topic. Lots of sources such as the Epoch Times give them extensive coverage. TFD (talk) 14:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
re "should not label something a genocide" - This sounds like an argument for a move discussion. Not for this discussion about the lede sentence. Fact is, while the title is what it is, we've already labeled it genocide. NickCT (talk) 14:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Agreed. The past move discussions have affirmed this is the proper term to describe this series of events in Wiki-voice. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
"This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards." Wikipedia:No original research Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:45, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
You seem to be confused, this discussion is about article content, I am not saying you violated the original research policy, but that inclusion on that basis would violate it. Corinal (talk) 21:48, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Inclusion of what on what basis? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:56, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
on the basis that the MW definition "would seem to fit the current situation perfectly." We need to rely on reliable sources not your own personal view. Corinal (talk) 22:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Include what on the basis of that MW definition? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
What? What does that even mean? I am going to stop engaging with this bludgeoning of discussion. Corinal (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Do you think its perhaps because I didn't actually argue to include anything and you didn't know what WP:OR actually was when you accused me of violating it? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
You argued against what TFD said, that we should not label it a genocide in wikivoice. Therefore, you wanted to include the wikivoice label. Now please stop replying. Corinal (talk) 22:16, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Also, WP:AGF. I know you have failed to assume good faith in numerous other discussions. This seem to be a recurring issue for you, please take a step back and consider the policy. Corinal (talk) 22:21, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
You have a very active imagination, I just pointed out that the technical definition fit better than the common meaning. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
So you think the article should not call it a genocide in wikivoice? Corinal (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
What does that have to do with anything? None of the explicit options do that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:33, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
A does. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
It most certainly does not. A says "The Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang." not "The Uyghur genocide is the genocide committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:33, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Calling a genocide is often a judgment call not a factual assertion, and this case is contested. CurryCity (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Have you looked at the plethora of sources above? ––FormalDude talk 23:48, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, maybe we use factual assertion differently. To me factual assertion is something objectively measurable, like distances. Judgment call is deciding whether something observed fits under certain definitions not directly measurable. CurryCity (talk) 23:54, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, we put things in wiki-voice if they are widely accepted in our best RSes, even if there is some dispute. Because wikipedia is not about truth or absolutes. It's about verifiability. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 03:16, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A Mhawk10 has given an extensive list of reliable sources to support that wording. No counter argument has backed their argument with such an extensive list of reliable sources. AlanStalk 01:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    @AlanS: well that just ain't true. Look at MarkH21's collation in the last previous RfC. Economist and Project Syndicate articles have been pointed to in this discussion and others which argue specifically against the term; these are top tier RSs by reputation. The Economist article is, in my view, poor. The PS one is not, and its two well-regarded authors point out that that genocide is hard to prove, and firm evidence upon which to make such a determination does not yet exist. RS news articles don't call it a genocide without attribution. The BBC published an excellent article in December explaining the intricacies of the label. The World Uyghur Congress (in the BBC's words "a global activist group"), trying to draw attention to the plight of the Uyghurs, organised a tribunal of experts to listen to evidence from victims and found China has committed genocide, but it has no legal standing and there's legal limbo since there are no courts capable of making a ruling over China (China isn't a member of the ICC, the ICJ needs the Security Council to agree to investigate). Both HRW and Amnesty, the leading international human rights groups, have called the abuses "crimes against humanity" but avoided the term genocide. There's scholarly disagreement over whether the crimes are covered by international laws on genocide, although from my reading I don't believe there's serious disagreement among scholars that China is committing "cultural genocide" in attempt to seriously undermine (or possibly completely wipe out) the group's identity. Exactly what the Chinese state intends is extremely difficult to determine; arguments regarding genocide hinge on proving intent to destroy. Allegations of widespread birth control measures are often pointed to, but the scale of these policies is unclear. So, on whose authority are we stating in wikivoice that it's "genocide"? We're not supposed to be voicing our own opinions, we're supposed to be following sources, and their agreement stops at "crimes against humanity" and "cultural genocide". Jr8825 • Talk 05:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Jr8825: you point to a handful of the sources that you claim to be problematic from an otherwise very large list. While there may be some academic disagreement on the subject, helped not too inconsiderably by funding flowing to confucius institutes at various universities around the world, the coverage from the mainstream press including the liberal press is a lot more consistent on the subject. The only reason this is subject to any debate at all is because there is no ability to test the claims before the ICJ. Given the pretty consistent coverage from large sections of the media I see no issue with option A. AlanStalk 06:16, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    I wasn't picking apart individual sources supporting the term genocide, I was actually doing the opposite: pointing to sources which say something different, that it requires qualification/further evidence, and arguing they come from well-regarded publications. However, if I'm basing my judgement solely on a comparison with Mhawk's list above (it may be incomplete), I'd say it looks as though if you deducted articles published in opinion sections, magazines or low impact journals, and those written by non-experts, or conservative American foreign policy hawks, you'd be left with a similarly sized pool of quality sources calling it genocide to those saying it's difficult to apply the term with certainty. A handful of Mhawk's sources are excellent sources, and I've read them. But it's dishonest to suggest there isn't genuine disagreement here among quality sources. Regarding the liberal mainstream press, it is not consistent - usages of "Uyghur genocide" without qualification (i.e. "accused") have not generally trickled into news reports discussing the topic within major broadsheet newspapers or newswires; if it had, we could drop the "characterised as" right now and all go back to improving our coverage of the abuses. Jr8825 • Talk 06:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    Just FYI while it is appropriate to exclude "opinion sections, and those written by non-experts" it is not appropriate to exclude "magazines or low impact journals," or "conservative American foreign policy hawks" as such exclusions would have no basis in policy, they're pretty explicitly not kosher. Also just a note on your previous comment, Project Syndicate is not a "top tier RSs by reputation" its not even a regular WP:RS... Articles from Project Syndicate are all opinion pieces and only usable under subject matter expert allowances. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    Both authors are subject matter experts; TFD linked their wiki pages below. Jr8825 • Talk 19:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, as I said the piece us "usable under subject matter expert allowances." Just as long as we're clear that Project Syndicate is not a "top tier RSs by reputation," isn't even a bottom tier RS most of the time, and has no such reputation. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
    And yet we have sources that explicitly talk about a consensus emerging among scholars as early as 2020 that a genocide is occurring. — Mhawk10 (talk) 15:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Mhawk10: that's an excellent article, I read it last time you brought it up and I've skimmed it again today. I agree with the author. I refer to the events as a genocide when discussing them in my personal capacity (without my wiki-editor's cap on). However, on close reading, it doesn't support using the term genocide without qualification. The author says "I increasingly felt that there was growing evidence to support each of the five elements in the UN definition ... However, though the above actions (actus reus) indisputably amount to crimes against humanity, to levy a charge of genocide also requires proof of requisite intention (mens rea) ... all of the indications ... are that what is being perpetrated against the Uyghurs is an international crime; however, it is notoriously difficult to show – legally – that particular acts of violence constitute genocide. As is widely recognized, part of this difficulty derives from the requirement in the Convention to prove intent ... the crime will not be somehow less bad for being called a “crime against humanity” rather than genocide: “What’s happening is terrible, period, and it is not less terrible if it is not [called] genocide." Jr8825 • Talk 19:45, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
    We should note that that source, while certainly valid, is not fully peer-reviewed; it is a "reflection", not a formal article ("Received 5 November 2020 /Accepted 6 November 2020). Smith-Finley is making a claim about the general trend of scholars, one that does appear to be broadly true, but more recent work — including reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum — that do not make an explicit conclusion in favor of the word genocide suggest she may have overstated her case. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 20:50, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Who on earth in English-speaking countries is going to publish any counters in the current climate? When you rely on judgment by people and non-measurable definitions, personal biases often come on top. CurryCity (talk) 02:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@CurryCity: arguing there's a global conspiracy/tendency to limit sources of a certain view isn't a relevant argument on Wikipedia. See WP:VNT and WP:FRINGE/WP:WEIGHT. We approach issues on the basis of their relative coverage in well-established sources, and those sources' reputations – that's just how we work. Jr8825 • Talk 05:53, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Re: And yet we have sources that explicitly talk about a consensus emerging among scholars as early as 2020. The source doesn't even mention a consensus, but even if it did, an "emerging consensus" would be a very different thing from a consensus - it says "a growing number". "I provide the background to the crisis, explain why the label “genocide” is now being used by growing numbers of scholars, activists, rights advocates, barristers, and politicians" What does "growing numbers" mean? 10% where previously it was 5? We have no way of knowing and the author is very much an advocate FOR use of the term. Pincrete (talk) 17:21, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
A>>>B>D. Oppose C, E. per MHawk10 and the extremely good sourcing we have that shows the consensus position is that this is a cultural genocide. Is there dispute? Probably, there is always dispute when it comes to genocide. But we still are beholden to the position most widely accepted in our WP:BESTSOURCES. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 03:14, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B2 per my comments in the above discussion. I also argued for B2 in the previous RfC on this sentence. Option E (current wording) is my backup choice, but I think the discussion above this one correctly points out its limitations, so I'm hoping a different preference can be found this time around. I oppose A; I've voiced my opinion on this in plenty of recent discussions, so I'll refer back to the closer's reading of consensus on that wording at the previous RfC: "the majority felt that the WP:NPOV policy cannot be set aside. By both numbers and strength of arguments, the discussion below concluded that the lede sentence should not directly label the events as a genocide". Option C should be not have been considered, it's blatant denialism. I'm ready to reconsider the use of genocide in wikivoice when a clear majority of RS use or accept the term, which I don't believe is presently the case (as can be seen by both routine RS news coverage and various RS articles adding qualification or advising caution). Jr8825 • Talk 04:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
re "the lede sentence should not directly label the events as a genocide" - Seems like a silly point given the title has already labeled the thing "genocide". Having the title label something "genocide", then arguing the lede sentence should not, only sets up contradictions. NickCT (talk) 14:17, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@NickCT: there problem is there are two (actually three) groups of editors who each have a consistent stance. (1) Editors who believe the term genocide is appropriate for wikivoice as the sources stand, (2) editors who believe the term genocide isn't appropriate for wikivoice as the sources stand (and (3) editors who take a line similar to CCP propaganda, because, in all fairness to them, they are consistent in their denialism, maybe they're even salaried). There have been two different community discussions, one on the title (protracted across multiple RMs), and one on the first sentence (the last RfC). A consensus was found in favour of group 1 in the RMs and a consensus was found in favour of group 2 in the RfC. That's what's causing the contradiction. Jr8825 • Talk 19:45, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825: - Alright. Well thanks for the history. And for the record, I don't know what the "right" answer is for the "genocide is appropriate for wikivoice" question. I do know that we should avoid contradictions though. And while the title is what it is, I think B2 maintains that contradiction. NickCT (talk) 20:04, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825: - Follow-up thought; did anyone in those previous conversations consider "ethnocide"? NickCT (talk) 20:06, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@NickCT:, yes, "Uyghur ethnocide" was the original title of the article prior to Feb 2020, you can check the page move history at the top of this page. "Ethnocide" hasn't been discussed much since we moved towards the title "Uyghur cultural genocide" (another title I have no issue with), which eventually led to the current title "Uyghur genocide". I presume this lack of discussion is because it's seen as insufficiently strong compared to genocide-related terms, and discussion/disagreement over the genocide label has become a notable part of the RS literature and coverage in this time too. Jr8825 • Talk 20:22, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825 and NickCT: The move discussion from Ethnocide of Uyghurs to "Cultural genocide of the Uyghurs can be found here. Original title was Ethnocide of Uyghurs in China and it was WP:BOLDly moved to Ethnocide of Uyghurs because an editor thought there was no need to disambiguate with the "in China" piece. The original discussion that resulted in moving the page to Uyghur genocide can be found at Talk:Uyghur_genocide/Archive_2. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825 and Mhawk10: - Thanks for the background guys. My initial thought was that "ethnocide" may be a less loaded and potentially more accurate title. Rethinking that a little a though, WP:COMMONNAME would probably seem to oppose "ethnocide" in the title.
It's sorta unfortunate b/c attaching the word "genocide" to anything is tremendously touch-y, and will inevitably lead to the kind of debates we're having in this RfC now... ah well.... That's life on WP I guess. NickCT (talk) 14:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time squaring this argument with the one you made above "We're not supposed to be voicing our own opinions, we're supposed to be following sources, and their agreement stops at "crimes against humanity" and "cultural genocide"." because all cultural genocides are genocides by definition. Would you support an opening that went "The Uyghur genocide is the cultural genocide..." ?Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
re: "all cultural genocides are genocides by definition": not by all definitions though, such as dictionary definitions that only use "mass killing", or the Genocide Convention's definition, since "cultural genocide ... was excluded from the UN Genocide Convention, and destruction of dignity is not considered genocide in international law, which requires the intended physical destruction of members of a group (quote from Finley paper we were discussing above). Jr8825 • Talk 19:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
How would the "demographic genocide" component here fit into "cultural genocide"? I'm seeing sources that list them as separate components of the abuses, such as 1, 2, 3, 4. Nor would that fit the extensive unqualified descriptors of genocide listed in my collapsed thread above. It seems that this is broader than "Uyghur cultural genocide". — Mhawk10 (talk) 15:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I, and I suspect most readers, would not know what a "demographic genocide" was anyway. My best guess is that it means suppressing the birth rate of a group, so just as that might not fit a "cultural genocide", it doesn't fit most definitions of 'ACTUAL' genocide either. Certainly no known examples in human history. Why would this not be seen as a "crime against humanity". I think the argument proves nothing other than that some sources characterise this as genocide, or some qualified variant of that word, others use other, less extreme, terms. Pincrete (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option A but the term "ongoing" should be replaced with something better: the Uyghur genocide isn't just happening now, but also includes past abuses. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ (talk ✉ | contribs ✎) 14:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option A, then Option B - A seems to me the most succinct and clear way to start of the article. The term "Uyghur genocide" has more than enough traction in reputable source to be used outright, without many unnecessary qualifiers. PraiseVivec (talk) 15:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A per User:Mhawk10's solid and convincing literature review and also MOS:LEADSENTENCE. --Nug (talk) 00:17, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B, B2, C, or D in roughly that order. Oppose A in strongest possible terms; it is flatly untrue that there is sufficient unanimity among the sources to call it a genocide in the article voice (an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim that would require near-complete unanimity and essentially no significant disagreement among any top-quality sources.) I'm going to copy-paste my paragraph from the previous RFC: Yes, it is true that sources exist that use the term genocide in the article voice; but in this case it plainly is not uncontroversial. See eg. the BBC, accused of genocide, Washington Post, careful use of quotes and even "scare-quotes" to avoid putting it in the article voice, AP news, attributed as "what some experts are calling...", etc. This is not the sort of treatment among WP:RSes that justifies using a term in the article voice. Even some of the academic sources people have cited in support, when examined closely, do not actually support using the term "genocide" in the article voice, since they present it as an ongoing debate within academia in which the authors are making an argument; eg. Finley says One year ago, not all scholars in Xinjiang studies agreed that the situation could or should be called a genocide, asking e.g. whether high levels of unjust incarceration of African American males (and the impact this has on birth rate) was also a “genocide.” Others worried that using this historically loaded term would put China on the defensive and do nothing to persuade China to desist from the abuses. In recent months, however, more have shifted closer to this position, and others beyond our discipline have joined them. Keep in mind that this is from a scholar arguing for using the term genocide; even for him, the strongest statement he feels he can make is that the ongoing debate is shifting in his direction. And, as Finley implicitly acknowledges, there are still plenty of recent academic sources remain more cautious; here, while it certainly treats it as serious and compares the situation to genocide on several points, cautiously writes around the legal definition of genocide and avoids using the term directly in order to establish an argument that does not rely on it. This paper takes a similar tack, saying that Whether China’s actions against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang deserves the label genocide or not has garnered significant debate in recent years. ... More urgent than the question of whether it is a genocide or not, however, is the question of how can the critical mass that has emerged in support of the Uyghurs be used to stop China’s action?. See also [2][3] for more papers that plainly use similarly cautious wording. I'll add some additional sources below:
Academic and mainstream sources that qualify, avoid, or debate the classification of genocide
  • Polaschek, Rosa (2021). "Responses to the Uyghur Crisis and the Implications for Business and Human Rights Legislation". Business and Human Rights Journal.
    The Chinese state's treatment of the Uyghur peoples and other minorities in Xinjiang province involves systemic human rights abuses, if not rising to the level of genocide under the Genocide Convention.[1]
  • Ryan, Sophie (2021). "Atrocity Crimes in Xinjiang: Moving beyond Legal Labels". Global Responsibility to Protect.
    This article considers the legal tests for establishing genocide and crimes against humanity in relation to the situation in Xinjiang. It suggests that the currently available evidence is likely sufficient to establish atrocity crimes and that the situation in Xinjiang requires urgent international attention, regardless of the precise legal label applied to it.[2]
  • Rossabi, Morris (2022). China and the Uyghurs: A Concise Introduction.
    Loaded terminology such as “genocide,” “atrocities,” and “terrorists” frequently characterize these reports, and the sources are either not cited or not fully identified.[3]
  • Slawotsky, Joel (2021). "Is China Guilty of Committing Genocide in Xinjiang?" Chinese Journal of International Law.
    Drawing all inferences against China, there are no colorable claims, let alone proof, that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang.[4]
  • "Analysis of YouTube Videos Used by Activists in the Uyghur Nationalist Movement: combining quantitative and qualitative methods" With the strict definition of genocide as ‘organized and unilateral mass killing on the basis of ethnicity’35 one can hardly qualify the Uyghur position in the Han–Uyghur equation as a subject of genocide. On the contrary, it is evident that the victims’ claims are over-exaggerated.[5]
  • "Xinjiang Year Zero" In compiling this book, we have been mindful of three key controversies that have held sway in debates about Xinjiang in recent years. The first is whether we should resort to the term ‘genocide’. While particular aspects and effects of the post-2017 system in Xinjiang do meet legal definitions of the term ... the system does not seem to be one of intentional mass death.[6] (Key point being that they describe it as an active debate and ultimately come down on the side of avoiding the term.)

Additional sources below contributed by CurryCity (talk) (updated 04:26, 4 February 2022 (UTC)):

  • Holdstock, Nick (2020). "Long march towards cultural genocide ...". Index on Censorship.
    When one considers Chinese policy in the region in toto, it amounts to cultural genocide.[7]
  • (2021). “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang. The Economist.
    By the common understanding of the word, it is not.[8]
  • Roberts, Sean R. “Cultural genocide, 2017–2020.” The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority.[9]
    growing accusations of cultural genocide ... accusations that the Chinese government is committing cultural genocide in Xinjiang
  • BBC 1. (2022). "Beijing Winter Olympics: Why are they controversial?"
    The Beijing government is accused of committing atrocities against the Uyghur Muslim population in the northwest province of Xinjiang."
  • BBC 2. (2021). "How do you define genocide?"
    It is defined as a mass extermination of a particular group of people ... "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group" ... Some have argued that the definition is too narrow; others that it is devalued by overuse ... the former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Alain Destexhe, wrote: "Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group."
  • Reuters. (2022). "UK, Canada join diplomatic boycott of Beijing Winter Games". Scott Morrison said Australia's decision came because of its struggles to reopen diplomatic channels with China to discuss alleged human rights abuses in the far western region of Xinjiang"


References

  1. ^ Polaschek, Rosa (2021). "Responses to the Uyghur Crisis and the Implications for Business and Human Rights Legislation". Business and Human Rights Journal. 6 (3): 567–575. doi:10.1017/bhj.2021.44. ISSN 2057-0198.
  2. ^ Ryan, Sophie (16 February 2021). "Atrocity Crimes in Xinjiang: Moving beyond Legal Labels". Global Responsibility to Protect. 13 (1): 20–23. doi:10.1163/1875-984X-13010003. ISSN 1875-984X.
  3. ^ Rossabi, Morris (15 January 2022). China and the Uyghurs: A Concise Introduction. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-6299-6 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Slawotsky, Joel (1 September 2021). "Is China Guilty of Committing Genocide in Xinjiang?". Chinese Journal of International Law. 20 (3): 625–635. doi:10.1093/chinesejil/jmab029. ISSN 1540-1650.
  5. ^ Vergani, Matteo; Zuev, Dennis (1 March 2011). "Analysis of YouTube Videos Used by Activists in the Uyghur Nationalist Movement: combining quantitative and qualitative methods". Journal of Contemporary China. 20 (69): 205–229. doi:10.1080/10670564.2011.541628. ISSN 1067-0564.
  6. ^ Byler, Darren; Franceschini, Ivan; Loubere, Nicholas (25 January 2022). Xinjiang Year Zero. ANU Press. ISBN 978-1-76046-495-0 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Holdstock, Nick (2020). "Long march towards cultural genocide: As news emerges of the present horrors happening in Xinjiang, an expert on the region looks at its recent history". Index on Censorship. 49 (4): 56–60. doi:10.1177/0306422020981277. ISSN 0306-4220.
  8. ^ ""Genocide" is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang". The Economist. 13 February 2021.
  9. ^ Roberts, Sean R. (2020). The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority. Princeton University Press. pp. 199–235. ISBN 978-0-691-20218-1.
For controversial topics, a "literature review" that consists of just one side of what is clearly an active debate among top-quality sources has no value - simply saying "sources exist that use this term" is not enough to justify usage of a term like genocide in the article voice once significant high-quality sources have been presented that disagree. Also note that many of the sources cited in support of flatly calling it a genocide in the article voice are careful to only use the term cultural genocide (something even some people arguing for A concede!) - if we rely on such sources, we can only call it a cultural genocide in the article voice. In fact, using such sources weakens the position for A, since cultural is a qualifier in this context - the sources in the review above that use only the term "cultural genocide" are plainly additional evidence against using the "generic" term genocide in the article voice, since if signfiicant numbers of authors are careful to make that distinction then we must be careful to make it as well. --Aquillion (talk) 08:55, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Aquillion: You've gotta be kidding me with chooisng including some of those sources and how you've represented others in this attempt at a rebuttal.
  • "Analysis of YouTube Videos Used by Activists in the Uyghur Nationalist Movement: combining quantitative and qualitative methods" is from 2011! Considering that the article covers abuses after 2014, why did you think that this souce was at all relevant to the current conversation?
  • The Chinese Journal of International Law, while imprinted under OUP, is actually run by the Wuhan University, a Chinese state institution, and the Beijing-based Chinese Society of International Law. The editor-in-chief of the journal is a professor at China Foreign Affairs University. Do you believe that the Chinese state does not input into the journal's review process?
  • The way you framed the stance of "Xinjiang Year Zero" seems like a misreading of the source. The full quote that you're pulling from is available below indicates that the authors agrees that the legal threshold for genocide is met and lists particular examples of how it is met! Like literally everybody else, they discount mass death of people already born.
  • While particular aspects of the post-2017 System in Xinjiang do meet legal definitions of the term—namely, the transfer of children from one ethnic group to another that is facilitated by a widespread residential boarding school system and a negative eugenics program named 'Complete Inspection and Handling of Illegal Births'... that along with widespread rates of family separation has produced a dramatic decrease in birth rates—the system does not seem to be one of intentional mass death (emphasis added). The goal of the book isn't to analyze this, the authors say, but to focus on analyzing the logics and effects of the system, and on documenting the lived reality of the people who are experiencing it.
When looking at it broadly, it's pretty clear what the consensus in mainstream sources is: that the Uyghur genocide is the series of abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang since 2014. — Mhawk10 (talk) 15:18, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
The 2011 source is probably outdated. I'm on the fence about CJIL since the author is named; and there might be difficulty finding a good publisher for these arguments. About XJY0, are you saying that the authors agree with calling it genocide for the reasons quoted? CurryCity (talk) 00:09, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
@CurryCity: What is the meaning of this edit? Are you adding comments to remove the source from the list because you believe their use was well-refuted? And I think I was pretty clear above w.r.t. XJY0. — Mhawk10 (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't think it's the best source. I've undone the change. Although I have something else to say about this source, if you would like to continue below under discussions. CurryCity (talk) 23:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree that at least one of Aquillion's sources is poor. So we are left with the BBC, Washington Post, Reuters and a few others - and his pointing out that some sources - including Finley - does not say what people here seem to think she says. Are the BBC etc funded by China too or are they just out of date and unreliable? Pincrete (talk) 12:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree it's quite disingenuous for @Aquillion to not list the year after the Youtube analysis article. I was actually feeling Aquillion was pretty convincing until I read Mhawk's analysis of the listed sources. Among other misreadings/cherry picking in Aquillion's quotations... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
  • The 2011 paper was included in error, but I strenuously disagree with your characterization of the others (and this is a problem in the majority of the sources you presented, too.) The threshold to call something a genocide in the article voice is, per WP:WIKIVOICE / WP:NPOV, that it must be uncontested fact (or at least a fact that is not seriously contested.) Therefore, sources that say "this is a clearly controverisal and contested decision, but we come down on the side of it being a genocide" must, for our policies, be counted as weighing against calling it a genocide in the article voice - they are strong sources for attributing it and describing it as an opinion, or for characterizing the opinion based on the way they characterize it and the evidence they present, but when it comes to deciding what we can say in the article voice, they are evidence that it is not an uncontroverisal descriptor. To use it in the article voice, it is not enough to have a bunch of sources weighing in on it as an ongoing debate to say that it is a genocide - you have to demonstrate that that descriptor is essentially uncontroversial, ie. sources treat it as a settled fact which is not under serious dispute. Sources like Xinjiang Year Zero (as well as several of the ones you presented), while they support some of the basic arguments used to characterize it as a genocide, clearly do not treat the descriptor as an uncontroversial position (they make it clear they see it as a hotly-contested and potentially controversial position, hence why that source indicated that it was avoiding the term despite seeing it as potentially defensible). That is an argument against the idea that we could use the term in the article voice as if it is undisputed fact. I specifically explained that core problem above, in the specific context of that source! And, again, as I pointed out, many of the sources you cited are careful to use the term cultural genocide and establish it as distinct from the traditional definition of genocide - using those sources to support unqualified genocide in the article voice is plainly misusing them; every source that makes that distinction is an argument against using flat unqualified genocide in the article voice. --Aquillion (talk) 19:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Aquillion, the authors of Xinjiang Year Zero are arguing that the acts meet the commonly-accepted UN genocide convention's definition of genocide. Darren Byler is extremely curt on this; a recent piece of his notes that genocide denial became a central element of China's Xinjiang policy in 2021. Surely it would be absurd to think that he could be talking about anything other than that Uyghur genocide when he is talking about people engaging in genocide denial.
I read the authors of Xinjiang Year Zero as being very equivocal ...that certain conditions of the UN covention may be met, but proof of intent is largely missing. The Byler piece is very unspecific, but your underlying logic appears to be that if China's policy is denial of genocide, there must be genocide. Apart from being SYNTH, this is obviously flawed logic. For China to deny genocide merely points to the fact that SOMEONE, has accused them of genocide. Pincrete (talk) 19:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Pincrete, if someone started writing about a country taking the policy of "white genocide denial", I think that we would both rightly call the writer a clown. Moving back to Byler's arguments, if you actually read the full article I've linked, it's very clear that Byler's giving a great bit of weight to the findings of the Uyghur Tribunal and that he is saying that China is committing genocide. My point in sharing this is to show that Byler, one of the writers of Xinjiang Year Zero, argues that there is genocide occurring. The Financial Times summarizes the book's position by saing that the point Byler is making is that even if the mass internment, birth control and forced separation of children from parents meet definitions of genocide in UN conventions, we do not need the term to deliver a sense of tragedy. Instead, the variety and consistency of testimonies are in themselves a powerful rebuttal to the Chinese government, which claims its critics rely on a handful of accounts from a small number of individuals that it says are not credible. Byler is not in any way saying that the human rights abuses in Xinjiang fail to meet genocide; the writers are encouraging people to note that the horrors of the situation are not made more or less horrible based upon the text of a U.N. statute. — Mhawk10 (talk) 21:44, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
That article does indeed make a much stronger case that he considers the term applicable now. Byler has been ambiguous to a degree before (see e.g. signing on to the Newlines report but avoiding the term in Xinjiang Year Zero; per the FT article quoted by Mhawk10 below, Byler avoids discussing the diplomatic spats that the clampdown sparked, as well as the western debate over whether to call the crackdown “genocide” — which, again, is an example of a reliable source stating there is ongoing controversy surrounding the term. That is precisely why I believe it's inappropriate to use Wikivoice to gloss over that fact in the lead per Option A.). Based on this most recent piece, though, we can say his position has very likely changed. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 21:52, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Mhawk10, I'm sorry I don't follow your logic about "white genocide denial", but it still sounds like a SYNTHy/OR-ish argument. the writers are encouraging people to note that the horrors of the situation are not made more or less horrible based upon the text of a U.N. statute. Yes I agree and Xinjiang Year Zero says that fairly explicitly when discussing the 'name' controversy. But what all this adds up to is that THERE IS a controversy about how to name these events. There isn't unanimity among equally qualified, and competent (and sympathetic) sources, and if even there were a majority, or a plurality, that isn't anything like the level of agreement which should exist for one 'name' to be in WP:VOICE. I wish WP could adopt the same logic as Xinjiang Year Zero - that what we call these events is less important than recording what is known and not known to be happening - rather than what 'label' to call it and whether a specific law has been breached, which ironically there is not a cat-in-hell's-chance of anybody being prosecuted under within any foreseeable future - and even less chance of adequate proof of 'intent' being found. Pincrete (talk) 08:55, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Pincrete, could you provide some evidence to support this statement? [there] isn't anything like the level of agreement which should exist for one 'name' to be in WP:VOICE. Thank you. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:43, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
The evidence is in the numerous sources given above by many editors- including Xinjiang Year Zero , which explicitly refers to the controversy over whether the UN definition is met. I was not introducing any new sources. How can there be a controversy if every competent authority agrees this is genocide? It is conceivable that it is increasingly a majority or plurality view - but neither of these would justify declaring that "this is genocide" unequivocally and indisputably according to virtually ALL competent sources, which is what WP:VOICE implies.Pincrete (talk) 13:58, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't believe we require unanimity to describe something in wiki-voice. Rather, we must simply describe views in proportion to their expression in published RSes. So if a majority or great plurality of sources describe a subject in a certain way, we can put that in wiki-voice and then ALSO describe that the controversy exists.
If unanimity were required for wiki-voice, then we would not say in wiki-voice that vaccines do not cause autism, or that germ theory is true. We would not describe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. We would not say that the Americans landed on the Moon in 1969. Of course these are all more lopsided topics. But the same holds true for topics closer to equipoise, such as that masks prevent the transmission of COVID-19 in schools. Or that the ancient Egyptians were racially heterogeneous, not strictly "white" or "black". Or that race is not a useful predictor for intelligence. We express the majority opinion in wiki-voice, and then describe the controversy in greater detail.
Unfortunately, as with all controversial topics, there are always RSes which express the minority opinion. I believe this is a case where the minority is definitely NOT a FRINGE view, and so it deserves careful attention and a great deal of treatment in the article. But it is absolutely the minority view that this is not a genocide. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:10, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Firstly, with respect, I know of NO competent authority that disputes most of these. There is virtually total equanimity about almost all those that I know anything about, with the possible exception of LHW/JFK. Secondly this isn't deciding something trivial. WPVOICE is informing its readers that it is a proven fact that China and specific Chinese officials are deliberately eliminating a whole ethnic group. That is more rhetoric than reason - it's advocacy not information IMO. I concur that it is certainly not a fringe view, some of the best, most neutral orgs in the human rights field hold that this is other than genocide. I don't know how one assesses a majority or even if it matters. How do you balance a well-respected org like Amnesty, with years of experience, against individual - sometimes relatively unknown - academics? How do you balance almost the entire UK print and broadcast media against individual activists? Pincrete (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
"WPVOICE is informing its readers that it is a proven fact that China and specific Chinese officials are deliberately eliminating a whole ethnic group." none of the options under discussion here do that, please stay on topic. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:39, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
I also agree that the comparison to germ theory denial, anti-mask sentiment, etc. are very much separate beasts entirely. Amnesty, The Holocaust Memorial Museum, US State Department legal advisors, and several specialist scholars represent a far more robust, even if minority, opinion than detractors of established consensus in those controversies. Implying a comparison between those and the atrocities in Xinjiang is a false equivalence. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 15:39, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Besides for "several specialist scholars" none of those sources refute the claims of genocide, I think you're getting confused. Declining to make a determination is not the same as opposing it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:44, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
To use a very rough analogy: Let's imagine there's a new body X discovered right by Pluto. Many astronomical organizations and scientists start calling it a planet, and there is evidence that it is, indeed, a planet. But some astronomical organizations and scientists of generally equal reliability and expertise examine the evidence and say "we cannot conclude that it is a planet," and a smaller subset make the active argument that we know it is not a planet definitively. Accordingly, RS media coverage often qualifies descriptions of this body along the lines of "the body X, which many argue is a planet..." or "X, which has been called a planet by..." etc. In this scenario, Wikipedia, per NPOV, should not unequivocally state that X is a planet in the lead, because there is an ongoing debate, and reliable sources differ as to how they approach X. In light of due weight, we'd need to say X is "often characterized as a planet" in scientific discourse.
What you're asking for is a proof of a negative, as if e.g. a report specifically seeking to determine if something is a genocide and specifically concluding the evidence is insufficient, and thus declining to call that thing a genocide, is completely irrelevant. That's not how a reasonable burden of proof operates, and it's not productive or intellectually honest to just write that off, otherwise you end up setting an arbitrary standard so as to exclude the reports that you disagree with. Moreover, the deliberately closed nature of Xinjiang and the obfuscation by the PRC means that a lot of the hedging, when you read the reports, is because there is a lot of evidence we don't know, which is why many are hesitant to say unequivocally that a genocide is not occurring; new evidence can emerge to change the hypotheses! But until that occurs and there is a demonstrable shift in RS's such that something near strong consensus or unanimity is reached around the terms genocide here, we cannot use Option A and maintain consistency with Wikipedia policy and guidelines. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 17:24, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And there are many reasons why such organizations may decline to comment on the issue of "genocide" such as maintaining even the slightest amount of relations in China, having very specific internal standards for terminology, or legal concerns. None of which have any bearing on WP:VOICE.
If we ask ourselves "Which sources, among those who have considered the question of the term "genocide", have decided to use it, versus not use it?" that is the most accurate representation of the available literature/source landscape. That is the source review which must be conducted for this question. Otherwise we can always find sources which have side-stepped any issue. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 17:24, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Your analogy doesn't work, option A is "The Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang." not "The Uyghur genocide is the ongoing genocide committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang." You've created a strawman so that you can then point to the strawman and make a sweeping pronouncement about it violating Wikipedia policy and guidelines. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:34, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
@Horse Eye's Back: Not sure what else to say. As the rest of this discussion has established, the issue is that Option A fails to contextualize the use of the word genocide; the omission of the qualifying phrase "often characterized as genocide" is precisely the issue. The analogy completely applies: in the scenario above, an NPOV lead would be "X is a body discovered in 2022 located near Pluto, considered by many scientists a full planet" or something similar.
@Shibbolethink: Amnesty, The Holocaust Memorial, and HRW are all RS. You're more than welcome to argue why they shouldn't be, but absent a compelling reason to the contrary, speculation on very specific internal standards for terminology, or legal concerns is irrelevant. They are important opinions in this regard and we cannot write them off because we think they are too finicky. (Not going to comment on maintaining even the slightest amount of relations in China because, to be blunt, that idea is completely at odds with the body of work of both HRW and Amnesty and seems to veer toward casting groundless aspersions. HRW and Amnesty are both completely banned in China.) Our job is to describe what reliable sources tell us; in this case, most RS's call it genocide, but a significant minority do not, and that is ipso facto proof that there is not consensus that these horrible atrocities are indeed genocide. On what grounds would we be justified to ignore this when outlets like Reuters, NYT, and others make similar qualifications whenever they mention genocide in the context of Xinjiang?
To quote you, I agree 100% that the question should indeed be Which sources, among those who have considered the question of the term "genocide", have decided to use it, versus not use it? But you seem to be under the assumption that unless a source specifically says "we set out to prove genocide and did not find it", then it isn't applicable. But that defies common sense — in an atmosphere where a majority of these fields do think genocide is happening, are we to suppose that the above reports just didn't think to think of genocide? Moreover, we do know that HRW and the Holocaust Memorial reports specifically lay out their reasoning (Amnesty opting to avoid spelling it out, but we have elsewhere in this discussion the BBC stating that Amnesty International reached the same conclusion [as HRW] in its own report.) To reiterate for HRW and the Holocaust Memorial:
  • HRW: The United States State Department and the parliaments of Canada and the Netherlands have determined that China’s conduct also constitutes genocide under international law. Human Rights Watch has not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time. Nonetheless, nothing in this report precludes such a finding and, if such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang—a group protected by the 1948 Genocide Convention—could also support a finding of genocide. HRW does not say genocide isn't occurring, but its examination led it to conclude that it could not say genocide is occurring based on the evidence available. It's entirely possible new evidence comes to light that changes this calculus, and that would be the perfect trigger for a new RfC. But until then, HRW represents another RS that does not endorse the term following its independent research.
  • The Holocaust Memorial report, p. 41 notes that the problem lies in genocidal intent, a necessary condition per the Convention (the Convention which all governments that have declared it to be a genocide have explicitly cited as the basis for their designations): To date, determinations of genocidal intent in other cases have been found wholly or primarily based on the finding of the intent to physically destroy the protected group, a finding which itself has leant heavily on evidence of mass killings. Given the limited reports of Uyghur deaths in detention, there is insufficient evidence at this time of the intent of the Chinese government to systematically kill living Uyghurs. Thus their concern that the Chinese government may be committing genocide against the Uyghurs —a completely valid concern, but short of a conclusion that genocide is occurring.
To return to the planet analogy, the above reports can be imagined as some fancy university astronomy department commissioning a report on Body X and concluding that while X is indeed a planetary-mass moon, and has at least some features of a planet, they cannot yet sufficiently conclude that it is a full planet. New evidence may arise to change their conclusions, as is the case in sciences and social sciences! But that a RS does not call X a full planet after a thorough review is still a significant viewpoint that we cannot just ignore because we disagree. It would be the established opinion of that body that the category "planet" does not apply, and if a significant number of other RS made similar conclusions, it would be a violation of NPOV to state otherwise in the lead by presenting X unambiguously as a planet in the lead sentence.
But even if all of the above reports simply avoided the term, that's still significant. Declining to make a judgment in favor of a claim based on evidence examined is a noteworthy finding. By your apparent standard, if a Cochrane Review found that there was insufficient evidence that e.g. mint is carcinogenic, that would be irrelevant because Cochrane did not make an argument in the negative. But that's an absurd outcome that underscores the problem: when you make a claim, the burden of proof is generally on you to show it; otherwise, you are asking someone to prove a negative and taking the fact that they can't as affirmative evidence of the assertion.
And, again, these are just the three reports. There are the other sources as well that dispute or decline to use the word genocide. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 23:45, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
"As the rest of this discussion has established, the issue is that Option A fails to contextualize the use of the word genocide" that has never been established... We also don't use the word genocide in the sentence, remember that both "Uyghur" and "Genocide" are part of X so option A reads "X is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang." which does not use genocide at all so it would be impossible to establish the need to contextualize something which is not used... If you would like to challenge the consensus name for this article you can but that is not germane to this conversation. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
1) WP:WALLOFTEXT. Please be more succinct.
2) in an atmosphere where a majority of these fields do think genocide is happening, are we to suppose that the above reports just didn't think to think of genocide? No, this is again a strawman. As before, I never said this. I also never said the things above are the only reasons an organization could not address the question. I was speculating. We do not care why they have chosen not to address the issue, unless they tell us why.
3) The BBC is not a source on what is happening in the minds of the employees of Amnesty Intl, it is only a source for what is written in the report, secondarily.
4) If a source does not address the question at all, we should not include them in source review.
5) Unanimity =/= Consensus. You are not the arbiter of what counts as consensus in our sources.
6) I appreciate that your opinion is valid and that you have stated it clearly by now. We need an independent uninvolved editor to examine this discussion, see what editors here think about the state of the sources, and go from there.
7) I think we are now discussing in circles, making no progress of any kind. You may respond if you wish, but I will not. Have a great day. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 07:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • B, B2 or D in roughly that order, with provisos. Oppose A in strongest possible terms. I endorse almost everything said by Aquillion above. Unlike him I would also oppose C as being poorly written and casting too many doubts. We should firstly focus on what is known and that is that a programme of human rights abuses have been occurring. With almost 100% certainty this programme includes mass detention, and very probably coercive contraception, abortion etc., with extensive accusations of other abuses. The precise scale of this programme is not known - or knowable - at present and there is fairly extensive disagreement about how best to characterise these abuses, even among those keen to highlight them. In addition to the doubts raised by Aquillion, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both chosen to not use the word 'genocide' even in any qualified form. I believe that Amnesty was one of the first orgs to highlight the plight of the Uyghurs and Amnesty is certainly no apologist for oppression, nonetheless it chooses to avoid the term. As do the legislatures of numerous parliaments which have chosen to use other terms. The reasons that all these bodies choose other terms may be pragmatic, but that is ultimately academic, they simply do, and we should respect their decisions. Again, none are China apologists. I would want to amend the B and B2 suggestions by amending the "often characterized as genocide" to "have been variously characterized as genocide, as cultural or demographic genocide or as crimes against humanity" - or whatever the principal other characterisations have been. Pincrete (talk) 10:36, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
So your postion is that Amnesty and HRW are in the pocket of the Chinese government? Do you have 'any' source suggesting that? BSMRD (talk) 01:30, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I haven't formed a position, but human rights now constitutes a major billion dollar industry. In 2012, the heads of HRW accepted a secret donation of US$470,000 from a Saudi billionaire who was himself was involved in certain human rights abuses. The money was conditioned on an agreement that the organisation refrain from criticising Muslim majority countries for violating LGBTQ rights, according to this report. It is an issue of credibility and damaged reputation. --Nug (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
No doubt you can find some entities denying any genocide is occurring Why would I even want to? My position is that there is almost zero doubt that very serious abuses are occurring . The doubt among sources - including many of the very best - is how best to characterise those abuses. I don't doubt for a milli-second that some good sources use 'genocide' or some modified or qualified version of that word. I am arguing that the use of unqualified 'genocide' is nothing like the near- universal levels which it should be for it to appear in WP:VOICE. Even those sources using the term are using it in a sense familiar to genocide scholars and international lawyers, but completely alien to most WP readers and to the 100s of generally accepted historical instances of 'genocide' including all those documented on WP AFAIK. They are talking about conscious suppression of birth rates among a group, not mass killing of that group. We don't at present even make clear this -relatively novel - use of the term is what those using the term mean. Pincrete (talk) 14:29, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A - In short, and without repeating the lengthy arguments above, Mhawk's source analysis, and the refutation of Aquillion's sources, convinced me. Nobody uses the phrase "Uyghur genocide" to refer to anything other than the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs. That some people don't agree it's a genocide doesn't change the definition of the label. We can and should explain the different positions to our readers, but there is no denying that there is a series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs, and that this is called the "Uyghur genocide". There are so many definitions of genocide that scholars constantly, for eighty years, have argued about what exactly a genocide is, and whether this mass killing or that mass killing was or was not a genocide. That some disagree doesn't mean we can't use the word. We don't need unanimity; the source analysis above establishes the mainstream consensus position. Levivich 15:06, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Expanding on my rationale since this came up in the review of the first close. WP:NEWSORG, part of the RS guideline, says prefer scholarship over news media. BBC, The Economist, et al., are top quality news media, but they're not scholarship. WP:AGEMATTERS, another section of RS, is why I value newer sources over older ones. HRW and Amnesty are also not scholarship. Dictionaries aren't even RS for this. Sources that are arguing about the UN definition of "genocide" also are not quite on point: it can be a genocide even if it doesn't meet the UN definition. Similarly, "cultural genocide" is a type of genocide. So as I look at the sources presented here, most of the "not a genocide" sources are old, or media, or dictionaries, or NGOs, etc., but the recent peer reviewed scholarship -- like the plethora put forward by Mhawk -- reflect a scholarly consensus to call it genocide. It doesn't have to be unanimous to be consensus. Levivich 13:08, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
HRW and Amnesty are also not scholarship … but Mike Pompeo, Joe Biden and various parliaments and think tanks ARE scholarship? The problems with actually employing your logic equably would be enormous. What legal expertise does a China expert possess? Why is their legal opinion sounder or better informed than any reasonably educated person's. Pincrete (talk) 13:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
While the exclusion of some of the premier human rights organizations and genocide studies groups seems extremely tenuous to me, even ignoring that, then, how do we weigh the relative scholarship? Smith-Finley's article asserting more scholars have come to see the term as genocide is significant, but not dispositive, in the very least because it's not a peer-reviewed article, and after her report several scholars have continued to decline to use the term, which suggests she overstates the case somewhat. Side B has pointed out the work of e.g. 1) Darren Byler (one of the premier scholars on the crisis, whose PhD was done in Xinjiang circa 2017), Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere in Xinjiang Year Zero, which declines to name the atrocities about which the book is written a genocide; 2) Ryan's "Atrocity Crimes in Xinjiang: Moving beyond Legal Labels" in Global Responsibility to Protect, which specifically argues that the threshold of genocide is not met (and uses that to critique the threshold of genocide for being too high); and 3) authors like Clark and Leibold, with specific expertise in Central Asia and China — among others. How does this not meet the standard for Option B by showing that at least a solid minority of scholars do not think it is genocide (as evidenced by their consistent refusal to use the term)? WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 15:08, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
IF we were to rely on scholars only (and I don't think that would be workable or would cover the range of views) - legal scholars would take precedence over 'China' ones. The nearest thing I know to legal sources is the UK barristers who said there was a "credible case" for genocide and (some of?) the legal advisers to Pompeo who said it wasn't genocide. Pincrete (talk) 17:17, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't think that's necessarily a given, because understanding the crisis requires, in my opinion at least, an understanding of the realities on the ground (something that people like Byler are indispensable for given the restrictions on actual reporting there) and the relationship to the Chinese political system. For example, targeted birth restrictions, the policy that is most widely referred to with respect to criteria of the Genocide Convention, have historically also occurred for the Han only in China, a policy that was only recently lifted (and which never applied to ethnic minorities). Obviously, the Han did not face concurrent repression of the kind the Uyghurs do now, but these facets of the situation highlight how background knowledge can be critical to assessment of genocidal intent. Regardless, though, I think this shows that it isn't useful to try to exclude certain categories of scholarship when it seems clear that there are plenty of people with broad expertise who contest the term. (re: Pompeo, it was the opinion of the office of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State). WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 17:35, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Others will know the US back-story better than I, but I believe the State Dept lawyers were split almost down the middle about the legal advice to give to Pompeo - so even that was not clear-cut. There are several mentions of that in this discussion. Pincrete (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
The memo itself was split, but according the sources (namely, the Foreign Policy article), that was not because the Office of the Legal Adviser was split, but because political appointees outside the OLA who advocated fora designation of genocide contrary to the OLA's conclusions included their arguments in the memo to Pompeo. Thus the opening lines of the article, A State Department review during the final weeks of the Trump administration of China’s conduct in Xinjiang pitted the department’s lawyers against advocates of a genocide determination. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 21:25, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A. First phrase must clearly define the subject of the page, and version A does just that. This is not a statement of fact, but merely a definition of the subject. What we say here is this: "The Uyghur genocide is [defined in RS as] the series...". Version B would be a statement of fact in WP voice, but this is an undeniable fact - as phrased. I think B could also be OK (2nd choice). My very best wishes (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

HRW

  • B. This seems relatively straightforward: when we have reliable sources that both endorse and avoid the term, and additional reliable sources specifically saying the issue is contentious, we need to maintain neutrality and have our wording reflect this. Aquillion's sourcing above unfortunately includes sources that should never have been considered, but that does not negate the overall argument. Given the confusion above with the inclusion of possible non-RS sources, I am going to list below examples (with some notes) of sources that should help illustrate why this is an ongoing debate. This includes ones from above as well as novel sources not yet posted here.
Amended sources contesting a full conclusion of genocide
  • Human Rights Watch April 2021 report, The United States State Department and the parliaments of Canada and the Netherlands have determined that China’s conduct also constitutes genocide under international law. Human Rights Watch has not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time.
  • As mentioned above, Amnesty International very conspicuously avoids the term genocide in its June 2021 report. The only mention of "genocide" is citation to the above-mentioned Economist article arguing the word is inappropriate.
  • I want in particular to re-highlight Xinjiang Year Zero by Dr. Darren Byler, Franceschini, and Loubere. Byler specifically earned his PhD based on the fieldwork and thesis he did resulting from living in Xinjiang. He speaks Uyghur, is a leading scholar on the oppression of Uyghurs, and lived there during the early stages of the present crisis (see also his Terror Capitalism. That he and the two other scholars are specifically saying that this is an ongoing controversy, and moreover concluding against calling it genocide, is important to note.
  • The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's November 2021 report similarly avoids concluding that a genocide is occurring; rather, it "may" be occurring.
  • (Mentioned by Aquillion) Sophie Ryan's "Atrocity Crimes in Xinjiang: Moving beyond Legal Labels" in Global Responsibility to Protect.
  • The Sachs and Schabas article in Project Syndicate. As someone who closely follows academic debates on genocide, I will admit I view Schabas in particular very unfavorably. But they are experts on the subject of genocide, and while this is not a full-length report like the Holocaust Memorial report or the HRW one, their opinion is still notable when we speak of whether or not the rejection of the term genocide is fringe among mainstream sources.
  • Note that the US Department of State's lawyers also made a similar determination — that genocide was not provably occurring — in early 2021, just before Mike Pompeo's announcement to the contrary. We do not have access to the underlying sources, to my knowledge, by there is plenty of coverage of the conclusion as such, e.g. in Foreign Policy
  • There are also various academics who have done extensive work on the atrocities against the Uyghurs and who have acknowledged the difficulty surrounding the term genocide. These are not strictly RS (one is a personal statement on social media), but I include them to show the extent of the debate and reinforcing that it is still, indeed, active, as already demonstrated by the other RS:
    • Timothy Grose, professor of China Studies with an expertise in ethnic minorities in the PRC, on Twitter: I fear--regardless of whether the decision was right--Pompeo's announcement [of genocide] (especially considering the timing) will mobilize and impassion those denying CCP violence against Uyghurs. The atrocities are documented by the CCP itself and can't be debated; terms, however, can be.
    • Michael Clark, editor of the forthcoming The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of China’s Mass Detention of Uyghurs, in the Smithsonian Magazine Clarke argues that cultural genocide is a more accurate description for China’s systematic campaign against the Uyghurs—but emphasizes that this designation shouldn’t be taken any less seriously
    • James Leibold, professor at La Trobe University who specializes in race and nationality issues in China, in The Diplomat: There’s little doubt China’s pernicious repression of Uyghurs and other Indigenous people is a crime against humanity and human dignity. Yet these charges of genocide misdiagnose the problem and moreover distract us from understanding and ultimately holding the Chinese government accountable for the wider pattern of abuse occurring inside the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
  • Moreover, there are plenty of reliable sources that describe the debate around the term, and the potential difficulties applying it to Xinjiang, which represent further evidence that this is indeed an ongoing, unresolved debate. In addition to those cited above, examples include "China’s Abuse of the Uighurs: Does the Genocide Label Fit?", a Feb. 2021 article for the Council on Foreign Relations by John B. Bellinger III.
  • Finally, in contrast to the RS that use the term genocide without qualification cited above by Mhawk10, here are some of the similarly reliable sources that behave differently, opting to use attribution and qualification regarding the word. We need to be clear on why Wikipedia should actively choose a more assertive characterization over the style used by these and similar news organizations.
    • The New York Times always qualifies coverage of Uyghurs and the word genocide by attributing the term to determinations by the US government
    • The Washington Post is also careful to avoid phrasing in line with sources like Axis cited by mkhawk10; it always attributes the determination to specific bodies like the US or UK tribunal and opts for “persecution” or similar terminology in headings (see examples here or here)
    • Ditto for the Wall Street Journal, such as in recent coverage of the proposed Tesla plant here.
    • Many other groups, such as ProPublica, Buzzfeed (which won a Pulitzer for its reporting on the atrocities), and Reuters likewise maintain a similar practice of unqualifiedly labeling the atrocities as such (or as repression, oppression, crackdowns, crimes against humanity, etc.) but only referring to “genocide” in quotes or with attribution specifying the source of the accusations.
    • On 2/4, NBC's Olympic coverage likewise followed the above tendency to name and describe the human rights abuses while also noting the "genocide" term is contested; this has drawn condemnation from the right (see e.g. FOX News' coverage here)

On a final note, that news articles regularly still attribute the term in quotations or note that it has been called by some as a genocide should make it clear that Wikipedia ought to do the same. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Pulling out a tweet? Really? If we're going to do that, we might as well account for James Millward, who is one of the most cited scholars on Xinjiang generally, who calls this a genocide. There's not really a need to create a long list of tweets here; doing a headcount on tweets is not going to be useful because tweets don't carry any weight on Wikipedia. If we're looking for where a lot of experts stand on the issue, why not look at the Raoul Wallenberg-Newlines Institute report, whose authors include Gregory Stanton, Adrian Zenz, Darren Byler, Stephen D. Smith, Irwin Cotler, Jo Smith Finley, and over two dozen other experts on international law, genocide, and/or the XUAR? We should really try to avoid stretching tweets and op-eds into relevant sources here as some proxy measure of where the experts actually stand. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
My point is not that it is not a genocide, but that scholars contest that it is. You're clearly not reading the sources here — Byler is indeed on the Newlines Report, but as stated above, in his most recent book, he explicitly rejects the term genocide (to clarify: the book declines to use the term to describe the atrocities; noting your above characterization of the book, I'll point out that acknowledging aspects of genocide does not equal acknowledging genocide because of the complex nature of the term — for example, mass death is a feature of the United States' bombing of Japanese and we interned them en masse as well, but we do not classify this as genocide just because some features that may be present in genocide are there). (The report also includes Grose as an author, strongly suggesting that inclusion on the report is a poor indicator of their overall position). As I disclaim, they are not RS, but further proof of the controversy among scholarship. What is your opinion on the recent reports by the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Human Rights Watch? WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Overall it very much seems that you want to prove that a genocide is occurring rather than acknowledge and account for the divergence in academia's and related advocacy organization's treatment of the issue. I am well aware of e.g. Millward's work and his position; that's why I didn't cite him above. My goal was to simply show that there are other highly cited and respected scholars, as well as in-depth reports by relevant organizations, that do not endorse the term genocide, meaning that we are abrogating WP:NPOV by doing so without attribution. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:09, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Look buddy, if I were trying to convince you that this is a genocide I would be listing all of the human rights abuses and making a crap ton of references to the research that exposes intent of Chinese government officials. I'm not doing that here. What I've shown here is that the mainstream academic position is that this is genocide; though it was not always this way, the mainstream consensus shifted after the revelations of forced sterilizations came to light in mid-2020. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia; that there is a minority of scholars who disagree with this does not mean that we should falsely balance the article to present them on equal footing. In contrast, WP:NPOV commands that we fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Much like the existence of an orthodox Kemalist school within Turkish scholarship doesn't make us hand-wave around the first sentence of the A-Class Armenian Genocide, I see no reason to hand-wave here. — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Rest assured, you do not need to relitigate the abuses to me. If you are curious, you are more than welcome to peruse the translations and essays I have written debunking arguments of those who deny atrocities in Xinjiang in my free time here. But the analogy you draw with the Armenian Genocide illustrates my frustration here: are we really comparing the conclusions of Human Rights Watch and the Holocaust Memorial with outright denialism? How do you account for the divergence from these two respectable, research-paper length sources? Are they fringe or handwaving? It's certainly not unfair to say that a majority of relevant scholars do think the word genocide is increasingly appropriate, but unless you think that the institutions and scholars listed above are completely fringe, then Option A seems too categorical. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:40, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A is undoubtedly the best choice here, explaining the matter in the most concise, clear manner consistent with wikipedia guidelines. C is the most undesirable with unnecessary additions, going much beyond the requirements of WP:NPOV and engaging in unnecessary333 hand waving. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B or D. As demonstrated by the collections of sources contributed by other users above, there are a number of works from reliable mainstream sources (including very recent ones) which specifically avoid the descriptor "genocide" in article voice for various stated reasons. This shows the use of the term is certainly not a consensus position in the mainstream, so it should not be described as such, unlike what Option A proposes. In contrast, Option B's "...often characterized as genocide" is both an accurate and clear description. I don't see a strong need for including 2014 as in B2, C uses "alleged" twice in an unwieldy sentence construction, and E is basically B without the word "often", which is less informative. Fiwec81618 (talk) 05:49, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A clearly defines the subject of this page, as clearly described by RS. I oppose B, B2, and C as unsupported expressions of doubt. I reject the argument that there is no unanimity among sources calling it a genocide, and that their distinction of cultural genocide is different from "generic" genocide. We call it a genocide because a sufficient number of sources describe it as such and because cultural genocide is still genocide, and not all that different in this case. The ​​​​forced sterilization of Uyghur women is widely reported, and the Rome Statute recognizes "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group" as an act of genocide when "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" [4] [5] [6]. CutePeach (talk) 13:35, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
    What about the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International's reports is "unsupported"? How do you account for the sources, including established scholars of China and Central Asia, in my above table? Where are you getting this unanimity from? WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 14:15, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option B2 or B:
Option A is essentially the same as Options 2-3 in the previous RfC, since which not a lot has changed in terms of academic RS or news RS usage. MOS:AVOIDBOLD and WP:BOLDITIS are still guideline/supplements (so it is not necessary to bold the title), and the NPOV/WIKIVOICE concerns expressed by other editors remain about asserting that the "Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses". There are RSes of both types since April 2021 that use genocide in their own voice (e.g. some from Mhawk10's list) and that don't use genocide in their own voice (e.g. some from Aquillion's list). It's well-documented that there is controversy over the classification and there aren't really significant review articles documenting a consensus.
From the last RfC, we had an academic journal article that commented explicitly on the trend in classification, the 2020 Finley article: The new statistical evidence on forced sterilizations in Xinjiang [in June 2020] has led scholars, media commentators and international barristers to consider the possibility that a full genocide – rather than what had to date been cautiously described by most as a "cultural genocide" – might be taking place. (note that many academic sources, including the Finley one, make the distinction that Cultural genocide, however, was excluded from the UN Genocide Convention, and destruction of dignity is not considered genocide in international law, which requires the intended physical destruction of members of a group). At that time, the "full genocide" was increasingly common over "cultural genocide" but had not yet become the predominant classification. It's not clear from academic articles commenting on the state of academic consensus (it has only been 6 months since the last RfC, so there aren't that many more journal articles) that it has since become the predominant classification.
I am reproducing one of the two lists from the last RfC for convenience (the other list from 10 months ago has already been incorporated into Mhawk10's list in this RfC).
Examples of RSes that only attribute or qualify "genocide" for Uyghurs/Xinjiang from the April 2021 RfC
Option B/B2 is a concise version of Option 1 from the last RfC (which was actually the pre-March 2021 version of the first sentence) - it is precise, descriptive, short, and less awkward. Option C gratuitously inserts "allegations" and "alleged" (not supporting C probably does not need much elaboration). Option E is slightly less direct in wording than B/B2, so would be less prefereable to those two. Option D is unspecific and seems to just mean "none of the above"? That would be almost the same as picking an option here and opening another RfC shortly after (e.g. this RfC is only 10 months after the last one). — MarkH21talk 23:02, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Option B2. A is far too definitive and controversial, as it implies there is no question that genocide is actively being committed. If may even be ambiguous at the same time as it implies "genocide" is synonmyous with "human rights abuses" of specific ethnic groups. It's not. B2 is preferrable simply because of the context "Since 2014" gives. C is far too argumentative. Also, personaly, I'd change the "often characterized" to "characterized by some experts and governments as genocide". To me, that would be peak NPOV :-) Option B3 anyone? It's an essential vitamin? EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 03:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Additional academic and mainstream sources that qualify, avoid, debate, or refute the classification of genocide added by EnlightenmentNow1792
  • State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China (Foreign policy, 2021)[7]


"The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials."


"The cautious conclusions of State Department lawyers do not constitute a judgment that genocide did not occur in Xinjiang but reflects the difficulties of proving genocide, which involves the destruction “in whole or in part” of a group of people based on their national, religious, racial, or ethnic identity..."


"Richard Dicker, an expert on international justice at Human Rights Watch... "International courts have concluded that, for a crime to come within the definition in the [Genocide] Convention, the perpetrator must intend to destroy the relevant group in a biological or physical sense,” wrote Todd Buchwald, who served as the special coordinator for the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice during the Obama administration, and Adam Keith, a former human rights specialist in the National Security Council, in an exhaustive study of U.S. decision-making on genocide. The convention, they noted, excluded the more limited concept of “cultural genocide.”


  • Playing Genocide Politics: The Zenz-Xinjiang Case - The European Financial Review[8]

By Dr Dan Steinbock, former research-director at the India, China and America Institute, visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, and at the EU Center (Singapore).

6/14/2021


"what Zenz claimed was that the fall of Uyghur birth rates and birth control measures in Xinjiang province was a proof of genocide... Oddly, unlike Zenz, Xinjiang records a positive overall population growth rate, with the Uyghurs growing faster than the non-Uyghur population.[3]"


In April, economist Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas, a leading international legal scholar of genocide, warned that “the Xinjiang genocide allegations are unjustified.”... "Who is the primary source of the genocide allegation that the leaders of the world’s most powerful nation prefer to their top-notch legal experts and a leading international scholar?...Adrian Zenz, [who] graduated from the hyper-Christian Columbia International University, headquartered in South Carolina, where teachers can lecture only if they affirm the Second Coming of Jesus. As Wall Street Journal once put it, Zenz feels “led by God” in his struggle against the Chinese communists.


In his first book, Zenz sought to explain Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Beforethe Tribulation (2012). As a born-again Christian, Zenz associates biblical truth as the truth, which may or may not be identical with earthly truth.


  • Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda (July, 2020)

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

By Amy Lehr, of the CSIS’s Human Rights Initiative

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25656


"The Chinese government has detained and “reeducated” more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang in an effort to fully secure and control—or stabilize—the population there.1 Some claim these policies rise to the level of crimes against humanity.2 The government seeks stability through a variety of measures, including incarceration, widescale detention without trial, and political indoctrination. Factory work, which the government believes causes ethnic minorities to assimilate by acquiring the mindset and attributes of mainstream Han Chinese culture, is an integral component of these stabilization efforts. Research indicates that ethnic minorities may be forced to take part in these work programs."


Is China Committing Genocide Against the Uyghurs?

FEBRUARY 2, 2022


"The story of what the Uyghurs have experienced in Xinjiang, from detainment to mass surveillance to forced sterilization, has trickled out slowly due to the stringent control China exerts over its media. But over the past ten years, as documents have been leaked to the press and more Uyghur activists have escaped the country, a bleak picture has emerged, leading some observers—including the U.S.—to classify China’s ongoing human rights abuses as genocide..."


"Clarke argues that cultural genocide is a more accurate description for China’s systematic campaign against the Uyghurs—but emphasizes that this designation shouldn’t be taken any less seriously. He points to the history of cultural genocide in Australia, North America and Latin America... Michael Clarke is an Australian scholar, and editor of the forthcoming book The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of China’s Mass Detention of Uyghurs," to be published by University of Manchester Press.

References

NB The above sources were added by EnlightenmentNow1792 to the list above provided by Aquillion, in adding them to Aquillion's post, EnlightenmentNow1792 was breaching talk page protocol - I presume inadvertently - and these sources were removed by Horse Eye's Back. The sources are restored here below EnlightenmentNow1792's own post by me Pincrete. Pincrete (talk) 08:44, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Note that "The European Financial Review" at first glance appears to be the reputable journal "European Finance Review" but it is actually a non-notable website. The piece is also labeled as "commentary" (which makes sense, its a highly unacademic or journalistic rant) and the author is only a self proclaimed SME not an actual SME as indicated by publishing history. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:46, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
The Smithsonian report contains substantial errors in its treatment in both the academic history of the research on the Uyghur genocide and the general history of the situation, to an extent that the report's reliability should be called into question.
  1. It credits Jo Smith Finley with conducting the research that found [t]hough Xinjiang is home to just 1.8 percent of China’s population, in 2018, it accounted for 80 percent of all IUD insertions in the country. Famously, that's the work of Adrian Zenz.
  2. The Smithsonian report claims that initially, the Chinese government insisted that the facilities were for vocational training. That's also false; initially, the Chinese government denied the existence of the camps. Only later, after immense reporting and documentation of the abuses in the camps, did China change its tune to publicly refer to them as benign vocational institutions.
I'm not entirely unsurprised that this got past magazine editors, but this is an example of why peer-reviewed academic RS are the best sources in this case when conducting a wholistic source analysis. — Mhawk10 (talk) 03:03, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Some of these sources are less than perfect, I agree. That does not mean that they deserved to be deleted, as they were! Can you explain to me why a China expert has any more expertise than any other moderately educated person on the legal question as to whether "intent to destroy" has been proven? The threshold of proof is known to be extremely high and it is meaningless to use a precisely defined legal term and then ignore the legal requirements of that term. That just reduces the word to rhetoric and advocacy. Pincrete (talk) 11:45, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Option A: Change the first sentence to The Uyghur genocide is the series of ongoing human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. Option B: Change the first sentence to "The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide." Option B2 Change the first sentence to "Since 2014, the Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, often characterized as genocide." Option C: Change the first sentence to The allegations of oppression of the Uighur ethnic group, that some Western academics have characterized as a genocide, constitute a series of alleged human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang

  • A As per sources and stated argument of Mhawk10. C is appalling, "allegations"? Really?...Jesus.... Deathlibrarian (talk) 03:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: Some may have political motivations for attempting the minimize what's happening in Xinjiang, but for people like me, it's simply a question of language and being respectful to it, and history. Genocide is a very strong word, a very new word, with a very specific meaning: "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." This is why that politician's response to a journalist's question about whether the massacres in Bosnia constituted genocide became famous: "There, have been acts of genocide... but...". People can be very lazy with language, even the people who we task with the responsibility of not doing that. To prove that the intention of the CCP is to "destroy" the Uyghurs? That's an extraordinarily strong claim, and thus requires extraordinarily strong evidence. Whether we have that evidence or not yet, is hotly debated, so I think is fair that Wikipedia should not state it as fact before we know it's a fact. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 04:02, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
    • @EnlightenmentNow1792: - You've offered a definition. The UN calls "genocide" one of several possible acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". I don't think there's any really opposition to the notion that China is attempting to "culturally convert" Xinjiang through "re-education". To a certain extent, I'd agree with you that this might not meet a lot of peoples pre-conceived notion of what "genocide" actually is. That said, I think it would meet other peoples definitions, and what ultimately matters is what the RS's are calling it. NickCT (talk) 15:20, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
      • @NickCT: - Well, you've beautifully illustrated my point about people being reckless with language, even those who we entrust or expect to do better than the average citizen, such as lawyers working for the United Nations. If only it were that simple. The definition of genocide adopted at that 1948 convention went way beyond what Lemkin, or any lay person, could have imagined. Lemkin invented the word because after the Holocaust there was clearly a need for it. We already have the neologisms of homo-cide and infanti-cide, we just need to add a -cide word that denotes deliberate killing of a specific "kind" (genus) of people, so to use his own words, published in 1944: "By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin tide (killing)...
Now this UN Convention, was the kinda occasion the idiom "a camel is a horse designed by committee" was invented for. Reems and reems of literature have been published on this, but you only need to read it yourself, it says: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole 'or in part,'." So (a) is killing, but we immediately run into problems with (b), which is "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group". So, legally, it's useless. Because according to it's own definition, say, playing defeaningly loud music at night-time over England, well, not all England, just part of it, Yorkshire say, this person really hates Yorkshire folk and would like to kill as many as he can. If he managed to do that to the point that it caused them "serious mental harm" and "part" of the population were killed from it because his tech was so good - Genocide, innit?
And it was demonstrated to be useless at the UN-sponsored occasion that was the Rome Conference, in 1998, when they established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Now because the 1948 convention had already been written, they couldn't exactly ignore it or contradict it. So, despite knowing it was legally unenforceable, they came up with a very clever solution. In Part II, which lists the crimes the ICC claims jurisdiction over, they simply fenced "genocide" off into it's own section, Section 6, copied word for word from the 1948 Convention. Then, in Section 7, they list all their "Crimes Against Humanity" which includes everything from murder to apartheid to a very ill-defined "persecution", but instead of genocide, it says "extermination".
So, in reality, no one will ever be convicted of "genocide" by the ICC. This was proven when the ICC was under enormous political pressure to charge him Omar al-Bashir with the crime, because that's exactly what he was doing according to the dictionary definition of the word. But of course, they couldn't, citing "insufficient evidence". This led to the infamous statement from the Court Panel's spokesperson that Bashir is to be tried for crimes against humanity, namely: "intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property." So, genocide by another name. When the follow up question was used of her, why not genocide, she apparently started giving a very politician-type answer of talking but not really answering the question, but that nevertheless ended with words "...but there was no evidence of genocide."
The point of all this is that this kind of absurdity is a end result of not being careful in the way you use and define words. I know there are many definitions of genocide, Wikipedia has a good article on it,[10] but it's not our place to adjudicate on that - we can only go off what the RS sources say. But they do get it wrong, I should know, I work for one. In sensitive areas like this, it's so important that we apply the highest standards to our sourcing. We should defer to the most respected academic journals and experts on this case as much as we can, or this will turn into a neverending battleground. - EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 18:56, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
  • @EnlightenmentNow1792: - I might agree with you on a lot of the points you've made. Maybe the UN did flub it. You certainly seem more aware of the background there than I am. That said, language on WP and IRL is both 1) fluid and 2) fundementally democratic. Lemkin certainly may have intended it to mean something that it doesn't mean now. Or, its definition may have become more expansive than Lemkin intended. We seem to agree that the definition is "what the RS sources say". I disagree that we have look at the "most respected academic journals and experts". That type of thinking leads to cherry-picking of the sources that we like under the guise of them being the "best". We should consider all sources. And really, we should be having this discussion in the context of an RM, not an RfC about the lead sentence. NickCT (talk) 19:49, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@NickCT: Agreed that when considering WP:COMMONNAME quanitity not quality matters. In this case, I think the quantity of RS avoiding the term genocide demonstrates that it's not the most commonly recognisable name, and growing popular usage is difficult to measure until more non-news sources appear over time. I made a point about the relatively equal quality of sources both for and against the use of genocide above, and just want to clarify that my comment was only intended to crudely point out the validity of sources which are sceptical of the term, and I didn't mean to suggest that less "excellent" sources are less valid. Regarding RMs, we've had lots of them recently and the consensus has not shifted in the last three. I find it hard to imagine things changing a fourth time around, particularly as resistance against a move is so strong there have been attempts to place and enforce a one-year moratorium on moves introduced last April, which may (or may not) have been overturned when I opened a new RM in September following the last RfC on the lead sentence, with the aim of bringing the title into line with the RfC (the RM failed). I don't agree with the consensus found in the RM and think the title isn't policy-compliant; I also suspect the extra input from uninvolved editors in an RfC may have contributed to the different conclusions, but this is admittedly speculation. I don't know what the most productive route forward is if this RfC again finds that calling the subject "Uyghur genocide" without qualificiation is inappropriate. I'm not particularly keen to waste more time arguing over the title, particularly as it's a title which, for all of my concerns about Wikipedia's neutrality as a tertiary source, does bring additional attention to a very serious issue, which I personally consider genocide. WP:ADVOCACY is not a justification for content, but I'm willing to accept what I myself see as advocacy if there's valid room for interpretation between experienced editors acting in good faith, and multiple attempts to address this have failed to gain consensus. The best option is probably to let more time pass before revisiting an RM. Jr8825 • Talk 23:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825: - "quantity of RS avoiding the term genocide ... not the most commonly recognisable name" - So what is? Determine the WP:COMMONNAME then do an RM.
"attempts to place and enforce a one-year moratorium on moves" - Wouldn't worry about that. WP:CCC. I think it's entirely appropriate to do RM's every 2-3 months on controversial subjects that are rapidly developing. If you ever want to see a really interesting series of move conversations that went both ways, check out Hillary Clinton.
"consensus has not shifted in the last three" - Perhaps this is an indication that we're on the right name?
Anyways, this is obvious a tough topic and it's important we get it. So I appreciate your thinking it through so thoroughly. My first impression when I came across this page was that the name was wrong, but I think I'm now leaning towards it being right. NickCT (talk) 18:17, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Although I personally agree with the characterization as genocide, I will go with Option B or E. We have gone over this last year (see [11]). Option C is incredibly inappropriate: User:Mhawk10 pointed out more than one non-Western source that describes the plight of Uighurs as genocide. With this in mind, I would also add that putting "Western" in would do little but add unsubstantiated fodder to those who claim that the genocide charges are just a "Western plot to undermine China" as many apologists for the CCP regime like to parrot. Option A is also inappropriate: As other editors have mentioned, the use of the term "genocide" remains contentious even among those advocating for the Uighurs and hesitancy to use the term as a matter of fact is not limited to apologists for the regime's treatment of Uighurs; see BBC, Amnesty International, US Holocaust Museum, and Human Rights Watch for examples. The sources in favour of labelling it as a genocide also do not establish that "Uyghur genocide" is a common name for the abuses against Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, but are rather explicit charges that some or all of the afomented abuses qualify as genocide. I also want to mention that whether or not the term "genocide" applies does not in any way lessen the severity of abuses inflicted upon the Uighurs or the urgency of the situation, just like how the 1996 Manchester bombing being a "terrorist attack" does not make it worse than the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which was not. Dankmemes2 (talk) 06:47, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Dankmemes2: the forced IUDs, abortion, sterilization are reason enough to call it a genocide [12]. The Rome Statute recognizes "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group" as an act of genocide when "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" [13]. I will add this to Genocide definitions to avoid further confusion. CutePeach (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
@CutePeach: The biggest thorn in determining whether or not the term "genocide" applies at this point is not so much whether the crimes are tantamount to genocide in severity, but whether or not all the necessary elements of the crime have been met. The crime of genocide requires both a physical element (measures taken to physically destroy a group) and a mental element (i.e. the acts must be committed with the intent to destroy the group entirely or in part). The forced IUDs/abortion/sterilization and family separations would indeed fulfill the "physical element" of genocide as per the Rome Statute. So far, some organizations note that it has been very difficult to determine whether or not the mental element is present because the Chinese authorities have been extremely uncooperative by "continuing to impede the flow of information concerning its crimes against the Uyghurs of Xinjiang" as per the US Holocaust Museum. Nevertheless, there are genuine reasons to to be concerned that it is a genocide. The Uyghur Tribunal did conclude genocide based off their own determination of intent.
I also want to reiterate strongly that whether or not the term "genocide" applies in no way affects the severity of the crime. The treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang is - in my view and many others - also a flagrant violation of the Rome Statute's section on "Crimes against humanity". It should be noted that crimes against humanity is not a lesser designation than genocide under the Rome Statute despite not requiring intent. At this point, the arguments over the term "genocide" are purely semantic in my view.Dankmemes2 (talk) 08:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A Sources call it a genocide, as Mhawk listed in the last RFC [14]. Some orgs like Amnesty stop short of calling it a genocide but they do not dispute it. Unless there reliable sources disputing the genocide term, there is no reason to change it. Francesco espo (talk) 23:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I am a bit disturbed by how lightly many of the above !votes take the question of whether or not to label this situation a "genocide" in Wikivoice. Genocide is an extremely serious charge, and we cannot put that charge in Wikipedia's voice unless there is an extremely strong consensus of all the reliable sources on the issue. There is no such consensus - not even in the slightest.
First, I want to just briefly review what "genocide" means, because there's a lot of confusion above, which is surprising to me - "genocide" has a very well defined, and until recently, very widely known meaning. The word "genocide" was coined during WWII, in order to describe events like the Holocaust, which was the attempted physical extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany, and which involved the murder of 6 million people. The word "genocide" literally means "killing of a race/tribe", from the Latin genus, meaning "race" or "tribe" (or the Greek "genos", with similar meaning), and the suffix -cide, which denotes killing (e.g., homicide, suicide, regicide, patricide, fratricide, all of which are different acts of killing). The United Nations Genocide Convention legally defines "genocide". As the UN explains, genocide requires intent to physically annihilate a group:

To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group.

Forced cultural assimilation is not genocide. Limiting the growth of a population (e.g., through a 3-child policy, such as the one China imposes on all ethnic groups, including the Uyghurs and the majority Han people) is not genocide, unless the aim is to prevent all births entirely, so as to bring the population to zero.
If we write, in Wikivoice, that China is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, what we are claiming is that China is either trying to kill every single Uyghur, or that it is attempting to prevent any Uyghur person from ever giving birth. This would be an absolutely astonishing claim to make in Wikivoice. This is just a bit of important background before I move on to what the sources say.
Now, I will move on to the specific claims that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. This really began in the last days of the Trump administration. As Foreign Policy explains, in its last days in office, as part of a wider set of moves against China (e.g., the sanctioning of Chinese companies and officials), the Trump administration wanted to formally accuse China of genocide. The Trump administration asked State Department lawyers to evaluate the genocide claim. As Foreign Policy says,

A State Department review during the final weeks of the Trump administration of China’s conduct in Xinjiang pitted the department’s lawyers against advocates of a genocide determination.

The US State Department's own lawyers concluded that the evidence did not support an accusation of genocide. Nevertheless, the Trump administration moved ahead and made the accusation anyways. The day before Trump left office, Mike Pompeo issued a statement to the press in which he accused China of genocide.
As Foreign Policy writes,

But wielding the g-word without a solid legal basis also carries the risk of politicizing and eroding the power of the designation, which has been invoked in the past century to describe the worst episodes of mass killing, from the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust to the slaughter of around 800,000 Rwandans during the country’s genocide.

Many people and countries have rejected the accusations. Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas (a well known and internationally respected professor of international law and expert on human rights and genocide) wrote an article rejecting the US allegations (and the Biden administration's refusal to renounce the Trump administration's allegations). They strenuously object to the allegation of genocide, describing it as politically motivated. They go through the reasons why they do not believe the accusation:
  • The US State Department has not substantiated the allegation with any evidence of mass killing or genocidal intent.
  • The Uyghur population continues to grow in Xinjiang (faster than the non-Uyghur population, in fact), which is difficult to reconcile (to put it lightly) with the claim that China is attempting to physically exterminate the Uyghurs.
  • There are human rights abuses in Xinjiang, but that is not the same as "genocide".
As Sachs and Schabas write,

The charge of genocide should never be made lightly. Inappropriate use of the term may escalate geopolitical and military tensions and devalue the historical memory of genocides such as the Holocaust, thereby hindering the ability to prevent future genocides. It behooves the US government to make any charge of genocide responsibly, which it has failed to do here.

Sachs and Schabas specifically criticize the Trump administration's decision to overrule its own legal advisors, and imply that the accusation was dishonest:

The genocide charge was made on the final day of Donald Trump’s administration by then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who made no secret of his belief in lying as a tool of US foreign policy.

Internationally, the allegations of genocide are extremely controversial. For example, there have been rival statements presented at the UN, with a statement mainly organized by US allies gaining 43 countries' signatures, and a statement rejecting allegations against China and describing them as politically motivated disinformation gaining 62 countries' signatures.
We can also look at how the news media treats these allegations. As Aquillion has shown above, the vast majority of news sources refuse to state the accusation of genocide as a fact, in their own voice. The vast majority of coverage describes "genocide" as an allegation or specifically attributes the claim to the people making it. This is because, as I've described above, the claim of genocide is very serious, highly controversial, and at present, almost entirely lacking in any evidence. Saying, "Well, some sources call it a genocide" is incredibly lazy and flippant, and it is not how we should approach such an important topic. Most sources refuse to call this a genocide in their own voice. We shouldn't either.
Just to repeat: if we decide to label this a genocide in Wikivoice, we are then claiming, in the encyclopedia's authoritative voice, that China is - right now - attempting to physically annihilate the Uyghurs, meaning that it is trying to kill every Uyghur or prevent any Uyghur from being born. If Wikipedia takes this extreme position, it will deeply damage the credibility of the project. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:04, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
And where did Sachs and Schabas specifically criticize the Trump administration's decision to overrule its own legal advisors or did you just make that up? We've discussed this twice before [15] [16], but as a reminder, the relevant Foreign Policy article describes the experts opinions sent from the department to Secretary Pompeo as a "split' memo. There was no overrulling of legal advisors. CutePeach (talk) 12:23, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
There was indeed an overruling of legal advisors, and this is clear from the article, the opening paragraph of which reads: The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations ... The "split" memo was the result of said lawyers writing against the conclusions of politically appointed advocates such as Sam Brownback: A State Department review during the final weeks of the Trump administration of China’s conduct in Xinjiang pitted the department’s lawyers against advocates of a genocide determination. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 13:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Where does the article - or any article - say legal advisors were overruled? Please be careful of WP:OR. CutePeach (talk) 16:11, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I do not think any reasonable definition of WP:SYNTH/WP:OR would label the above as such. The FP article establishes a) that the legal advisors did not believe the word genocide was appropriate, and submitted written material along those lines; b) as SoS, Pompeo nevertheless chose to label the atrocities genocide; and c) this put the legal advisors "at odds" with the administration. OR refers to analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources, but paraphrasing the above facts to "overruled" is entirely supported by the facts. How else would Pompeo made his designation if not to look at the arguments made by the legal advisors and reject them? Pompeo did not accept or endorse the view of the advisors, after all. Why is "overrule" unacceptable? WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 17:49, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Because it implies authority that the legal advisors did not have, their role was to advise not to decide and "overrule" necessitates there being one decision which overrules another decision. It simply does not describe a situation in which some advice was not followed in the making of a decision. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:56, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
If "overrule" is reject or disallow by exercising one's superior authority (per Oxford Languages) or to rule against or disallow the arguments of (a person); to rule or decide against (a plea, argument, etc.); reject (Dictionary.com), I do not see how it is at all synthetic. The Office of the Legal Advisor submitted an argument and it was rejected. Overruled here is a synonym. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:04, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I'll also add that that definition of overrule as necessitating a decision makes little sense in an American legal context, too, where lawyers raise objections and judges either sustain or overrule them. But raising an objection does not entail making a decision, etc. Your definition is at odds with popular and legal understandings of the word "overrule" and seems predicated on an aversion to acknowledging that qualified legal researchers did in fact disagree with the term genocide in this context, and that this disagreement was rejected by Pompeo. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Where does it say rejected? Also the source talks about a "split memo" which doesn't seem to be reflected in your argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Again: OLA argued that it isn't genocide in a State Department review that pitted the department’s lawyers against advocates of a genocide determination. The review process, as the article notes, evolved in 2004 re: Darfur and has since then served as a model... to determine whether genocide had occurred. The advocates and the lawyers submitted a split memo as a result of the review process, because they presumably did not reach an agreement (as evidenced by the wording "pitted against" and the fact that the entire article is about how the lawyers concluded differently from Pompeo and political appointees who also authored the memo). Pompeo took the side of the advocates of a genocide determination, and not the lawyers. I am unsure how else we are to interpret these facts besides "Pompeo read the arguments of the OLA and rejected them." WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
The split memo, as the article makes clear, is because others in the State Department — the article names only two political appointees, Sam Brownback and Kelley Eckels Currie — wanted to use the word genocide, in contrast with the OLA. (If we wanted to actually speculate, we could say that in all likelihood, what happened was the appointees got wind of the memo and intervened against it, forcing the OLA to insert their own views, based on what we know about how State operated under Trump, but that, obviously, is not part of the underlying source, and should not be included in any Wikipedia article.) WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
If as you say they did not reach an agreement then there was nothing to overrule, right? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
The lawyers made an argument. They sent it to Pompeo as part of an established review process. Pompeo subsequently made a decision directly at odds with the lawyers' findings. Ergo, Pompeo rejected (or, discarded, dismissed, denied, refused, overruled) the arguments of the OLA lawyers. What am I missing here? That the opposing arguments were sent in the same "split" document does not influence the logic here.WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
What exactly is the purpose of nitpicking over a word choice made outside of an article? This seems like a waste of time.Paragon Deku (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree, which is why I am so bewildered by this exchange. The underlying point remains the same: qualified legal experts at the Department of State concluded, contrary to Pompeo's designation, that genocide was not occurring in Xinjiang. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 00:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Thats not what they concluded, they concluded that there was not the evidence to prove genocide which is a very different claim. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough, but for the purpose of this RfC, where the concern is whether or not there is consensus in favor of using the word genocide, that is not a particularly salient distinction. In either case, the OLA analysis represents evidence against such a theorized consensus and in favor of the argument that characterizing the word genocide as consensus is non-neutral. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 01:02, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
But they aren't talking about whether or not to use the word, they're talking about whether or not to make a legal determination. Those aren't the same thing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
This feels like semantics. Again, the relevant State Department lawyers here said "we do not think this amounts to genocide based on the evidence we examined" or something similar (as we can gather from the FP article). How is that not relevant? In doing so, the article highlights, they were specifically telling Pompeo that they did not think he should make the determination of genocide, which is now what the US uses to refer to the atrocities because Pompeo made that designation. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 17:38, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
We are talking about meaning so semantics is entirely appropriate. Do you mean determination instead of designation in "Pompeo made that designation"? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:56, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
For all intents and purposes, I consider those synonyms here, but yes, the latter should be determination given that's the word I use in the first part of the sentence. I am not sure how that's relevant. And, again, I am not sure how the FP article does not describe "a situation in which some advice was not followed in the making of a decision", to quote your original assertion. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 20:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A or B per Mhawk10's sources and my own reading. This is a new kind of genocide carried out with forced sterilization and marriage. Pious Brother (talk) 02:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B/B2 I suppose I should actually vote now that the RfC is open again, since I've been involved in the discussion surrounding it anyways. In a case where there is clear and well reasoned disagreement between top tier RS (which can be clearly seen from the piles of sources above, across academic, NGO, and press sources) the solution is not "pick a side", which is what A proposes. The solution is to put what can be generally agreed to upon across RS (in this case "human rights abuses") into wikivoice, and attribute disputed material ("genocide"), which is what B does. There is not room in the lead to individually attribute, which is what the "classification of abuses" section is for, so often characterized as genocide feels a fair enough way to put it. I have no opinion on B vs B2, either is fine (though B2 will need to edit the second sentence as well, so we don't immediately repeat "since 2014"). BSMRD (talk) 13:36, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

  • A. Guess I'll weigh in, now that there's no longer an expectation that I be neutral. I am inclined to agree with what Levivich hinted at over at the closure review: that for the purpose of determining whether the crimes being committed in Xinjiang truly amount to genocide, we should rely a bit more on peer-reviewed academic research than mainstream media sources. Judging from what has been linked so far, it seems to me that a substantial majority of peer-reviewed academic journal articles favor classifying it as genocide; if additional articles are produced, I will revise my position accordingly. Moreover, many sources that deny that the crimes against Uyghurs constitute genocide as specifically defined in the Genocide Convention admit that they are still essentially a kind of genocide, which they have taken to calling "cultural genocide." I think that because the definition of genocide in the Genocide Conventions is a specialized definition and "cultural genocide" is a close enough concept that academics often describe it, as the name suggests, as a form of genocide, it is entirely reasonable for us to gloss this as genocide too for the purpose of writing a first sentence. Of course, the fact that these terms and the exact ways in which they apply to this topic are debated should be mentioned in the lead and discussed in detail in the body. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
@Compassionate727: here are a handful of solely academic sources to prove that the statement a substantial majority of peer-reviewed academic journal articles favor classifying it as genocide is not obviously true (please note some, or all of these sources are listed above, I'm simply repeating them here as editors seem to be missing them through all the noise). I also want to point out that there are equally strong sources arguing that it is genocide, but Mhawk lists most of these above, and the only purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate that the label is adequately contested so that NPOV and attribution apply. The criteria for the sources is that they are 1) listed on JSTOR 2) published in 2020 or later (so as to exclude earlier sources unable to account for recent revelations/allegations about the extent and nature of abuses) and 3) they do not categorically call the abuses genocide. Not all are peer-reviewed journal articles, some are "expert" reports by think-tanks. However, the number of peer-reviewed articles arguing that it meets the definition of "genocide" is not large either, as can be seen from Mhawk's list, and this is largely to be expected given the recentness of events and the fact we're dealing with the social sciences, not natural science.
Additional academic sources that do not classify abuses as "genocide", or explicitly urge caution/prefer the non-legal term "cultural genocide" (note: some sources repeated in above lists)
  • Finnegan, Ciara (11 January 2020). "The Uyghur Minority in China: A Case Study of Cultural Genocide, Minority Rights and the Insufficiency of the International Legal Framework in Preventing State-Imposed Extinction". Laws. 9 (1): 1. doi:10.3390/laws9010001.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) "The complexity of the concept of cultural genocide ... renders its codification particularly arduous, [it is unlikely] that the concept will be reintroduced in the legal category of genocide. ... This result might be disappointing for some, as it ends up placing the term ‘cultural genocide’ outside the international legal sphere. The concept still remains particularly relevant as a paralegal concept"
  • Smith Finley, Joanne (3 July 2021). "Why Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang". Journal of Genocide Research. 23 (3): 348–370. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109. "I increasingly felt that there was growing evidence to support each of the five elements in the UN definition ... However, though the above actions (actus reus) indisputably amount to crimes against humanity, to levy a charge of genocide also requires proof of requisite intention (mens rea) ... all of the indications ... are that what is being perpetrated against the Uyghurs is an international crime; however, it is notoriously difficult to show – legally – that particular acts of violence constitute genocide. As is widely recognized, part of this difficulty derives from the requirement in the Convention to prove intent ... the crime will not be somehow less bad for being called a “crime against humanity” rather than genocide: “What’s happening is terrible, period, and it is not less terrible if it is not [called] genocide."
  • Roberts, Sean R. (2020). The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority. Princeton: Princeton University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvsf1qdq. ISBN 9780691202181. "While Lemkin, who was the first to use the term, viewed genocide as a process of destroying group identity, the international community has generally interpreted it very narrowly as the mass murder of members of a nation or ethnic group with the intent of completely obliterating their gene pool. As most of the literature on the concept of cultural genocide bemoans, international conventions on genocide generally do not protect nations or ethnic groups from the intentional destruction of their cultural distinctiveness, way of life, and identity. However, the same literature also asserts, in line with Lemkin's original definition of genocide, that such cultural erasure is central to all forms of genocide. If cultural erasure is not always accompanied by the mass physical extermination of a people, it historically has been expressed through substantial violence. ... Prior to 2017, Uyghurs were subjected to frequent violations of their human rights, faced discrimination on the basis of their identity, and were pressured to assimilate and restricted in their ability to practice their religion, but their identity did not face complete eradication. This situation changed over the course of 2017 as the PRC began a systematic and violent dismantling of Uyghur culture and identity that can be unequivocally described as cultural genocide." (pp. 199–201)
  • Lehr, Amy (2020). Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda (Report). Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). JSTOR resrep25656. "...part of a broader pattern of severe human rights abuses" ... "Some claim these policies rise to the level of crimes against humanity"
  • Xu, Vicky Xiuzhong; Cave, Danielle; Leibold, James; Munro, Kelsey; Ruser, Nathan (2020). Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang (Report). Australian Strategic Policy Institute. pp. 04–05. JSTOR resrep23090. "...in what some experts call a systematic, government-led program of cultural genocide"
  • Hendrix, Cullen; Noland, Marcus (2021). Economic Diplomacy and Genocide in Xinjiang (Report). East-West Center. Retrieved 22 February 2022. "The government of China is engaged in a systematic campaign to eradicate culturally, if not physically, the Uyghur Muslim minority of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The US State Department characterizes this policy as "genocide", documenting an extensive list of continuing abuses..." (p. 2)
  • Zhang, Albert; Wallis, Jacob; Meers, Zoe (2021). Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: The CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms (Report). Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "The Chinese Government continues to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang despite a proliferation of credible evidence, including media reporting, independent research, testimonies and open-source data, that has revealed abuses including forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region"
  • Smith, Nicholas Ross; O’Brien, David (1 January 2021). "Responding to China's crimes against humanity in Xinjiang: why dialogue is the only pathway for the emerging "coalition of the willing"". Global Affairs. 7 (1): 79–86. doi:10.1080/23340460.2021.1921605. "Whether China’s actions against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang deserves the label genocide or not has garnered significant debate in recent years. Many articles, such as pieces in international affairs magazines Foreign Policy (Asat & Diamond, 2020; Cronin-Fruman, 2018) and Foreign Affairs (Roberts, 2021) argue that yes, a genocide (of sorts) is occurring. While, on the other side, The Economist (2021) recently ran an article arguing that genocide was not the appropriate term for “the horrors of Xinjiang”. The current state of the debate around whether it is a genocide or not is extremely politicized – determining a genocide always is (Bloxham, 2005) – and devoid of constructive dialogue. The losers are, of course, the Uyghurs who could end up being a “political football” to be kicked back and forth in a new Cold War. More urgent than the question of whether it is a genocide or not, however, is the question of how can the critical mass that has emerged in support of the Uyghurs be used to stop China’s action?"
Jr8825 • Talk 20:05, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jr8825: I appreciate the time you took to make the list and for listing the criteria you used. I have a few responses:
  1. A critique on the selection criteria: merely being published in or after 2020 doesn't guarantee the source is out-of-date. The forced sterilization revelations were first published by the AP on 29 June 2020. There are a number of sources listed above that explicitly point to that revelation as a turning point in which conversations shifted from "cultural genocide"/"ethnocide" to "genocide". This would render the Finnegan article (which is published in an MDPI journal, which is listed as WP:MREL on WP:RSP) and Uyghurs for sale (which is an excellently detailed report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute) clearly pre-date the revelation of forced sterilization, while the absence of the mention of forced sterilization whatsoever in the CSIS piece (published on 1 July) may indicate that it was written without accounting for the knowledge of widespread forced sterilizations. The scope of the CSIS piece also appears to be pretty narrowly focused on forced labor rather than the situation writ large, which may limit the applicability of the source.
  2. I don't think that Finley is being represented correctly by being included in the list. Finley writes that the suppression of Uyghur births on this scale, in concert with the Chinese state’s other efforts to eradicate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group, amounted quite simply to a genocide-in-process. She believes that there is a genocide in Xinjiang, writing later that she believes that China has deliberately inflicted on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and that "Cultural genocide" is not a less radical variant of genocide, but rather as a tactic to bring about the same end, if a little more slowly.
— Mhawk10 (talk) 02:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't think that Finley is being represented correctly by being included in the list. As I believe I have noted elsewhere, Finley publishes in academic journals, but she is also unapologetically an activist outside of her academic work - as of course she is quite entitled to be - where she expresses herself less equivocally. What she can't do, and we can't do however is to treat her activist pronouncements, in mainstream media and public interviews as though they were subjected to the same rigourous peer-review process as an academic journal. She can't "have her cake and eat it". Pincrete (talk) 19:14, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Having thought about this for a few days, I have come to the opinion that most of what has been discussed so far during this RfC is actually irrelevlant. MOS:BOLDLEAD instructs: If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence; MOS:FIRST adds that: If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence. Nowhere does the MOS mention NPOV reasons as possible reasons to make an exception to these guidelines; WP:POVNAMING and WP:POVTITLE clearly anticipate that if a substantial NPOV objection exists, it will be addressed by renaming the entire article. Consequently, I think that so long as the article sits at this title, the first sentence should use "Uyghur genocide" as the subject of the first sentence. (Whether we ever use that name again in our voice is a topic for another discussion.) If editors believe that using "Uyghur genocide" as the subject of the first sentence presents a significant POV problem, they should open an RM, per the NPOV guidelines I mentioned. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:50, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B/B2 per the arguments and sources provided above by Jr8825 and BSMRD as well as those in this discussion. These are not great options but the best of a bad bunch. There is no where near consensus in sources for using genocide in wikivoice. I also think that is verges on being a Bad RfC due to the poor phrasing of some of the options and recency of a previous RfC. The RfC should really be about use of the term genocide in wikivoice for this topic as oppose to an RfC purely about phrasing. Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:36, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B or B2 I was the former closer of this discussion and reading over every comment I did make my opinion on the topic, and since I have the opportunity to now contribute I think it's appropriate too. Sourcing on this issue is in no way unanimous in calling this genocide. The sourcing by Aquillion and WhinyYounger is more than abundant to justify a qualification for calling this genocide. To call something genocide in WP:WIKIVOICE is serious and we should always tread cautiously considering WP:NPOV and WP:EXCEPTIONAL. I concur with Vladimir.copic's statement on the the formatting of this RfC. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 02:40, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B/B2 and wishing to echo Vladimir's sentiment on this being a potential Bad RfC, I initially did not feel a need to contribute to this conversation as I felt that it was apparent that nothing much has changed since the previous RfC and it appeared to be the same editors raising the same points ad naseum, but I feel as if the plurality of redundant choices as well as poor wording may skew results. Paragon Deku (talk) 03:40, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B2 as a first choice, A as a second choice. There is a clear preponderance of sources that use the term genocide in some form; whether that is enough to speak plainly in Wikipedia's voice I'm not entirely sure, but to not mention it, or to make it seem like a fabrication, does not match reality. --Jayron32 17:50, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B2 is first choice closely followed by B. Otherwise E or D. The current sentence is IMO not that great but it's a messy situation and call me a nay-sayer but I doubt we'll get anything good that will achieve consensus by further discussion especially given it's not long since the last RfC so while D seems fine in theory, it's probably a waste of time. I strongly oppose A, despite my personal believe there is a genocide, it's not well accepted enough by sources to say so in wikivoice. I also strongly oppose C which is way too wishy-washy and poorly written. I assume we all agree that if C does pass, we should be consistent and use only the Uyghur spelling in the lead rather than randomly switching. But that nitpick aside, there's far less disagreement that Uyghur's are being oppressed let alone that there are human rights abuses; and it's not just Western academics. Nil Einne (talk) 03:43, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment having looked more into how C came about, you can also put me into the bad RfC camp. While it may seem weird to spend a lot of time discussing an RfC before starting it, it actually can make a lot of sense to spend sometime. In particular, rather than just picking an opposing text it's necessary to make sure it's sufficiently well written that it's something that has a chance, so it's fair to critique a proposal and see if it may be improved, especially by discussion among those who may support such a proposal. If a proposal isn't even consistent in spelling, it's probably not that. While it's understandable why spelling of the name of the people isn't consistent, being inconsistent in a single sentece just comes across as sloppy. So while I'm sure it wasn't the intention I agree with those who are saying option C comes across like it was intended not to be chosen which isn't good. Also while the situation is changing (more sources seem to be using genocide), IMO it was a mistake to not wait longer before we had a new RfC on this. Even if we come to B1/B there's the possibility those few more months may be enough and at the very least would reduce the "didn't we just discuss this" aspect? Nil Einne (talk) 04:11, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
  • B I was just studying the new books "China and the Uyghurs: A Concise Introduction" by Rossabi ([17]) and "Xinjiang Year Zero" by Byler, Franceschini, and Loubere ([18]). Both of these books say that there are substantial academic debates behind the genocide terminology for this crisis. "Often characterized" strikes me as an accurate and balanced statement. By the way about B2, "Xinjiang Year Zero" uses 2017 instead of 2014 where it says "particular aspects and effects of the post-2017 in Xinjiang do meet legal definitions of the term" in the introduction and in other parts of the book. MGetudiant (talk) 22:42, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Who wrote "A or B, in that order ... " above? Also, would a better sub-section heading above be "Voting" since it seems to be where editors are casting votes? Burrobert (talk) 02:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

That was me (sorry for not signing earlier). I've also changed it to be labeled "survey" in line with the common way RfCs are structured, and also since consensus is not determined by a vote, but by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy. — Mhawk10 (talk) 03:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Rightho. Good choice. Burrobert (talk) 04:15, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

There is an article in Project Syndicate, "The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified" by Jeffrey D. Sachs and William Schabas. Whether or not there is a genocide is a matter of dispute. TFD (talk) 03:04, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Looks like an opinion piece to me not an article. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I think TFD meant to say (also explained previously) that the authors themselves have enough credentials even though their piece might not be the publisher's position. CurryCity (talk) 21:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I would certainly agree that this is an WP:RSOPINION. It helps us frame that there is controversy, even if theirs is the minority viewpoint. Per WP:MAINSTREAM, just because a controversy exists does not mean we cannot label this a genocide in wiki-voice. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does C feel intentionally poorly constructed? It's a tautology that misspells Uyghur, you could make the same effective sentence with something like The Chinese government has allegedly committed a series of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, characterized by some Western academics as genocide. while avoiding the poor grammatical construction. It feels like a subpar option has been chosen to represent this sentiment in comparison with the other choices. BSMRD (talk) 03:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

It’s verbatim from a suggestion in the discussion above the RfC. If you’d like to put the thing above in as an option, feel free to add it to the top as its own option (Option F) or to advocate for it as a sort of Option D (say, Option D1). — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't think option C is helpful myself, and it seems rather silly to include it. I would suggest linking the previous RfC on precisely this sentence in the brief though, as it's relevant. Jr8825 • Talk 06:54, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
There's a few different accepted spellings given that we are translating a word from a Turkic Central Asian dialect through Mandarin as a demonym over into English. It's amazing that there is any consistency in how to spell the word. See: Uyghurs. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:38, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I want to mention a couple points. First, FormalDude has said that per WP:YESPOV, factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. But is calling something genocide or not a factual assertion, or at some level a judgment call, in this particular case? CurryCity (talk) 21:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

It sounds like you're implying that the labeling of something as a genocide is always subjective. If so, I don't think that's true at all. ––FormalDude talk 22:17, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
It almost always has subjective components. I wouldn't lump it together with factual assertions. CurryCity (talk) 22:42, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Genocide is a pretty measurable claim, considering how hard it is to hide the effects of one. Could you explain what the subjective components are? ––FormalDude talk 23:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
How do you determine whether it's a group being destroyed versus only families with more children sterilized? How do you measure intent when the rest of the country is under the same policy? CurryCity (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
That's all besides the point unless you're trying to undermine what reliable sources claim to have determined. ––FormalDude talk 03:54, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
When you said "factual assertions made by reliable sources", that means RS plus factual. And I'm saying, genocide determinations cannot be 100% factual assertions as something measurable. They intrinsically involve judgment calls. CurryCity (talk) 19:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
In the social sciences most facts intrinsically involve judgment calls. We're talking about political science/sociology/anthropology here not mathematics or physics. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
@FormalDude: Indeed, the label "genocide" is not subjective, or at least, it shouldn't be. It denotes a deliberate attempt to physically annihilate an ethnic or religious group (not cultural assimilation, not limiting of population growth, but physical annihilation). The issue here is that the accusations of genocide leveled against China are extremely controversial. The main reason why they're controversial is that there is no evidence of any mass killing or any plan to annihilate the Uyghurs. In fact, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang is growing faster than the non-Uyghur population, which is very difficult to reconcile with the claim that the Chinese government is actively trying to physically wipe out the Uyghur population - which is, after all, what "genocide" means, both colloquially and legally. I've noted some of the criticisms of the genocide accusations in my !vote above. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:20, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Second, a popular topic always gets a lot of coverage, and you may find say a hundred sources using "genocide" without qualifiers, but if an equal or greater fraction of all coverage couches the term "genocide", uses "cultural genocide", or "ethnocide", how is it fair to pick only one wording for the first sentence? CurryCity (talk) 21:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

This is decent point. The classification of the abuses is described in the body (Special purpose tribunals, scholars, commentators, journalists, governments, politicians, and diplomats from many countries have labeled China's actions variously as genocide, cultural genocide, ethnocide and/or crimes against humanity.) and therefore the terminology should probably be described in the lede section as well. I'm not sure it needs to be in the first sentence of the lede though. ––FormalDude talk 22:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Isn't that already in the third paragraph of the lead? — Mhawk10 (talk) 22:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Indeed it is. I wonder if that will satisfy CurryCity's concerns. ––FormalDude talk 22:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Not every coverage uses unqualified "genocide." Say, 40% use genocide, 30% cultural genocide, 20% ethnocide, 10% something else, why pick only genocide? CurryCity (talk) 01:12, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
I think your numbers are off; you're vastly overestimating the prevalence of "ethnocide" as a descriptor in the literature here. My classmates and I picked it initially because that was what we thought the best description of events was given the facts that had been publicly reported in Autumn 2019, but the word never really got picked up by literature in any significant way. Where are you getting your numbers from? — Mhawk10 (talk) 01:56, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Mhawk10: They're just giving a theoretical example.
@CurryCity: In what way are we only picking genocide? The lede section lists the other notable classifications. We use 'genocide' in the first sentence because it's the most common. It would be redundant to have the first sentence list multiple terms for the same thing. ––FormalDude talk 03:51, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Aren't we debating here in order to remove any wording of characterization, classfification, etc and state in wikivoice that what's going on IS/EQUALS a genocide without qualification whatsoever? CurryCity (talk) 19:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
We use 'genocide' in the first sentence because it's the most common. Firstly I don't accept that is true, but even if it were, what about the huge number of sources (including many of the largest news sources, and major human rights orgs such as Amnesty) which do not use ANY "overarching" term in their own voice, (any variant of "genocide" or any variant of "crimes against humanity" or similar) but simply report specifics - detention, coercive contraception etc. Are these sources simply being ignored? Their choosing to NOT use any "overarching" term is NOT a 'vote' for or against any specific term - it's a vote in favour of there being no clear agreement - even among the best and most sympathetic sources - as to how best to describe what is happening. Pincrete (talk) 13:54, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Isn't that already in the third paragraph of the lead? Actually the wording of the third para "At first, these actions were described as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, and an ethnocide or cultural genocide" strongly implies that any term OTHER THAN genocide is a thing of the past and that there was universal acceptance of the terms previously. Half of that para is true, that the use of unqualified 'genocide' has increased, but the para also implies that a whole range of other descriptions have now been abandoned, thus ignoring not simply "ethnocide" and "cultural genocide" but many other descriptions widely used, including the simplest "human rights abuses". Pincrete (talk) 14:06, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be better to cite this piece there, but the shift in the how people who study the Uyghurs talked about the human rights situation from "ethnocide"/"cultural genocide" to unqualified "genocide" is definitely noted by scholars. In fact, it's the work that revealed the presences of a forced sterilization campaign that brought this shift in language about. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:00, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't doubt that the numbers using unqualified 'genocide' have increased. Actually the numbers using ANY descriptor, or no "over-arching" descriptor, have probably also increased as news coverage and consequent awareness have increased. However this para is the nearest thing to an acknowledgement that some "governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, and academics" ever have used any term other than genocide - and it implies they no longer do so. WP is supposed to cover all significant PoV's. Where is the coverage of the immense number of parliaments, NGOs, news sources etc which STILL think that serious human rights abuses are almost certainly happening in China, but which use other descriptors or no "over-arching" descriptor? The NGOs include Amnesty and HRW and a significant number of parliaments etc. which have all chosen to use other terms. Pincrete (talk) 11:26, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Here, the BBC says: "The issue of whether China's alleged abuses amount to a genocide has divided the international community. The case for genocide is based on reports that China is taking steps to erase the culture of the Uyghurs and assimilate or diminish the population through programmes of forced relocation and birth control. In a report published in April, the US-based charity Human Rights Watch concluded that China was responsible for crimes against humanity in Xinjiang - but stopped short of calling the state's actions a genocide. Amnesty International reached the same conclusion in its own report." The reporting by the BBC and the viewpoints of Amnesty and HRW are ignored, the claims of a single Newcastle academic (Finley - in an excellent piece, but not the only viewpoint) are bolstered and championed.
Over and above the issue of whether this amounts to genocide, the BBC piece actually explains the grounds on which the genocide claim is made (cultural erasure, forced assimilation and forced lowering of the birth rate) - while our aricle largely presumes that the reader is sufficiently familiar with international law to understand that these elements can constitute genocide - even though there is not a single accepted historical instance of 'genocide' which did not involve mass killing. Pincrete (talk) 12:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Again I note that the standard way to deal with this sort of problem is to create an Introduction to Genocide page or similar. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I think this is a good point from Pincrete. Wouldn't it make sense to use this BBC language in the first para to make the first sentence (whatever it ends up being) clearer? It would also help perhaps to move the first sentence of para 2 up to the first para, to flesh this out further while still remaining at a high level of generality, and then' breaking the para before it gets to the internment stuff?
Re the shift in the how people who study the Uyghurs talked about the human rights situation from "ethnocide"/"cultural genocide" to unqualified "genocide" is definitely noted by scholars: I think that's right, and this is the point of para 3. It might be sensible to add dates there to make that clearer, e.g. "From 2014, these actions were described as etc. From around 2019 as more details emerged, some governments---"
Finally, while we're on the lead, I don't think all the country by country stuff at the end of the lead should be here; it's unhelpful info. The stances of AI and HRW might be more relevant there. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) How exactly would a new article address the matter of our failure to mention that a significant number of news sources, human rights orgs, parliaments and others consciously use terms other than genocide, a term which the BBC says is highly disputed? It would partially address the issue of what is meant by genocide in this instance - but as the BBC text shows - an entire article isn't needed to clarify that. Only the wish to be clear, rather than to use the most super-heated term available whilst expecting readers to "read the fine print" to actually understand this article. Pincrete (talk) 16:40, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

A number of editors have stated that their main issue is with the name of the page, not the first sentence per say. Unfortunately the "superheated" term also appears to be the WP:COMMONNAME which ties our hands a little bit, its not used more than all other names combined (majority) but it is the most used (plurality). Also we do mention that other terms are used, both in the lead and in the article. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:47, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
This discussion is about whether the fact it is qualified (due to the lack of consensus among reliable sources) should be changed, to use an unqualified sentence. Other terms are used by a significant number of reliable sources and so the first sentence should have qualification. Corinal (talk) 19:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
its not used more than all other names combined (majority) but it is the most used (plurality) Given the extreme nature of the term, and the less 'drastic' nature of many of the alternatives (oppression, repression, HR abuses, ethnocide etc) and that many (such as the BBC and Guardian I think) choose to NOT use any overarching characterisation, but to report specifics (detention, sterilisation etc), given all of this, that's a very weak argument for choosing to almost exclusively use one term IMO. Pincrete (talk) 20:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Unfortunately our naming conventions instruct us to pick just one term for the article title, I agree that its far from an elegant solution. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:40, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
@Pincrete:, we have discussed that BBC article before in #Additional Sources. The way you describe the BBC as saying the genocide term is "highly disputed" is a WP:MISINTERPRETATION of the source. The BBC article says HRW and Amnesty stopped short of calling the state's actions a genocide [19], and explains how the Uyghur Tribunal was established due to the inaction of bodies like the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. This article can be used to describe a "divide" in the "international community", but it does not support the very broad changes you are proposing. CutePeach (talk) 13:08, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
It isn't a misinterpretation, it isn't even an interpretation, it's a direct quote in BBC's own voice "The issue of whether China's alleged abuses amount to a genocide has divided the international community". Later it also clarifies what the basis of the genocide claim is, which we signally fail to do. The HRW and Amnesty text is elsewhere. HRW and Amnesty both used other terms = they chose NOT to call it genocide.
The tribunal was set up by the Uyghur congress. It's a charity using a novel way to draw attention to the plight of the ethnic group it represents. Fair enough, but let's not pretend that it has a farthing's worth of judicial authority, weight or experience. Its 'verdict' was a foregone conclusion because it was explicitly set up for that purpose. Individual witnesses may have credibility, but the tribunal itself was a publicity exercise. Pincrete (talk) 00:12, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
Be prepared to have more papers, groups, and sources turn up to nudge the narrative in certain ways, even though they all cite one another in one gigantic circle. CurryCity (talk) 02:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Wasn't there already a consensus for the current opening line not too long ago? Obviously consensus can change, but has any dramatic new sourcing come to light to justify a change? I don't particularly think the current opening is perfect, but it seems like we're on track to simply loop back to how it was before for no particularly good reason. Paragon Deku (talk) 06:18, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
@Paragon Deku: Yes, there was an RfC on the opening sentence last July, which came to a consensus that the allegation of genocide could not be made in Wikivoice. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:25, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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