Enough With Moral Imperialism


The US is not only the dominant economic and military superpower but also the self-proclaimed beacon of freedom, denouncing human rights violations throughout the world. 

Intensifying its criticisms of China's mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, the US government has called it a genocide. This is another case of US moral imperialism. What has happened in Xinjiang is not genocide, and if it is, then there is not a doubt whatsoever that the US committed genocide against Native Americans. 

According to the UN Genocide Convention in 1948, the definition of genocide must meet at least two criteria. The first one is physical extermination. In Xinjiang, the Chinese government incarcerated about a million Uighurs in reeducation camps. No evidence of mass killings has been unearthed. The US and its allies themselves have not produced any incriminating pictures or credible witnesses of mass killings. And, most importantly, the Chinese government does not aim at physically destroying the Uighur minority.

The second aspect of genocide is depriving an ethnic group to reproduce. It is well known that the Chinese government strictly enforced its one-child policy on the Han majority while giving more leeway to ethnic minorities, including the Uighurs. Instead of declining in Xinjiang, the Uighur population has grown faster than the Han Chinese and tripled from 1949 to 2018. 

China's mass arrests clearly do no meet the criteria of genocide.

However, the strict definition of genocide, adopted by international laws, does apply to the US government's handling of Native Americans.

In fights and wars with Indians for the expansive land, the US Army and settlers slaughtered Native American men, women, and children and destroyed Indian villages. With the support of the US federal government, local authorities offered bounties for murdering and scalping Indians. As an example of extreme cruelty, Colorado offered $25 for scalps with the ear on in 1867. The federal and local governments as well as white settlers intended to systematically exterminate the "savages" and to take over their land. 

Those natives who survived or surrendered were herded off to reservations, where their descendants live a life of poverty. In the 19th century, tens of thousands of Native American children were forced to attend boarding schools, whose goal was to kill the Indian through assimilation. The destruction of Native Americans as an ethnic and cultural group was conducted throughout the US and sanctioned by the federal and local authorities. 

In Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, genocide is defined as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; 
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
(f) Genocide;
(g) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(h) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(i) Attempt to commit genocide;
(j) Complicity in genocide. "

That the physical extermination of Native Americans and seizures of their land were completed in the 19th century is not an excuse to exculpate the US from the horrendous crime. 

The genocide of Native Americans is ample reason to disqualify the US as the leader of the free world. It has no right to impose its moral values on other countries through force or coercion. How can a country that exterminated the indigenous people be the "beacon of the free world"?

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Read these other articles:

Democracy and Human Chattel

Picasso and Columbus: What They Have in Common

The Democracy Trap: Ballot Box vs. Industrialization











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