Never Again: The Time to Stop China's Holocaust is Now
As early as December 1942, the Allies knew of Nazi Germany's massacre and horrific abuse of Jews and other populations the Nazis deemed inferior. Two million Jews had already been killed by then. But the Allies were slow to act against the unspeakable evil. By the time the Second World War was over, the Nazis had exterminated 20 million people, including six million Jews.
Today, the world is again displaying that willful, unconscionable blindness. It is doing nothing as Communist China forces Uighurs and other minority groups it finds politically or culturally undesirable into prison camps with marked similarities to Nazi concentration camps.
The Nazis killed their victims by gassing them, shooting them, and subjecting them to gratuitous torture and forced labor. Thousands died of disease and malnutrition. With highly organized teams, Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, conducted abominable medical and "eugenic" experiments on detainees. Out of revulsion at what had happened in Nazi-occupied Europe, there were many proclamations of "Never Again." Never again would the world stand by and allow a genocide of such mammoth proportions and abject evil.
Despite that pledge arising from the carnage of the Shoah, the world seems indifferent to Communist China's network of prison camps, where the atrocities being committed may well approach or surpass those of the Third Reich. Staring us in the face is the possibility of another monstrous genocide. In addition to Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, other minorities, Christians, Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners are being shoved into these camps for re-education through brainwashing, rape, sterilization, involuntary abortions, torture, and forced labor. Falun Gong adherents, a peace-loving group with over 100 million followers worldwide, banned since the 1990s, are being harvested for their organs to supply an ever-growing transplant industry. Genetic experiments are being conducted to breed sought-after characteristics in humans and monkeys. Replacing notions of Aryan superiority with Han Chinese supremacy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aiming to become the global hegemon by creating its own delusional version of a master race.
Satellite images indicate that Beijing has established 260 high-security prison camps with factories in Xinjiang, in which more than a million people are being held. Some reports estimate more than 400 camps across the country, with nearly three million detainees. These facilities are fortified with heavy concrete walls and guard towers. The Chinese government says the camps are meant for combating terrorism and separatism and enhancing rule of law through vocational training and employment. While former detainees claim they suffered torture, hunger, solitary confinement, brainwashing, and forced sterilization, the government denies that human rights are violated in these Nazi-style camps.
In his many books, Holocaust expert Edwin Black has documented how scores of corporations were complicit in the Third Reich's evil. One book, IBM and the Holocaust, describes how the multinational tech giant produced solutions for Adolf Hitler to systematically track his labor and genocide operations. Black's research establishes how companies like BMW, Bayer, Ford, Shell, and Daimler-Benz monetized the evil by making use of concentration camp labor. In a redux of this rapacious practice from the Holocaust, many corporations today are similarly using labor from China's internment of minority groups, the largest since the Second World War.
Save Uighur, a Chicago NGO, lists 83 companies profiting from Chinese prison camp labor. Among them are Adidas, BMW, Calvin Klein, General Motors, Nike, Jaguar, and Mercedes.
Forced organ-harvesting is rampant in these camps. The China Tribunal, established by the non-profit International Coalition of End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), reported that organs of Falun Gong detainees are harvested when they are alive. Some prisoners are killed for their organs. Harvested organs are used to service a billion-dollar annual transplant trade. China offers unusually short waiting periods and sponsors many websites that advertise advanced bookings for hearts, lungs, and kidneys. This suggests that the prisoners are an organ bank, to be killed on demand. Dr. Enver Tohti, a surgeon witness who had been required to extract organs, attested to the practice. He also confirmed that detainees were subjected to physical exams, blood tests, X-rays, and ultrasounds.
While Mengele, the infamous Nazi physician, carried out grossly inhumane "scientific experiments" on concentration camp inmates, Chinese scientists are using CRISPR technology to edit genes and replace specific DNA sequences to create biologically enhanced soldiers.
Former director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated last year that "U.S. intelligence shows that China has even conducted human testing on members of the People's Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities." Most countries have banned the use of CRISPR, but in China, it has already been used to perform gene-editing on babies.
Chinese scientists have also used CRISPR to genetically modify primates using human genes, raising serious ethical questions. They added a human gene important for brain development to monkey embryos in an effort to improve cognitive functioning and reported that five of the eleven surviving transgenic monkeys performed better on some memory tests. Ethicists are asking what kind of existence the modified monkeys could have among other members of their species. They are also worried about the potential impact of other genetic experiments China might have conducted.
It is 76 years since the Holocaust. For the persecuted Chinese minorities, the world has forgotten its "Never Again" pledge. The Chinese state is repeating the monstrous evil of the Nazis, and as during the Second World War, global corporations are again extracting soulless, sinful profit from China's camps. Condoned or even promoted by the Chinese state, organ-trafficking and gene-editing take Mengele's work to new depths of systematic depravity.
The immense suffering of Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other groups in China's 21st-century version of concentration camps continues. Entire populations are once again in danger of being annihilated. The world community has so far responded with heedless silence. The time to keep the pledge of "Never Again" is now. The time to act is now.
