In the 1940’s a nation attacked a sovereign state then occupied and annexed its territory. That would be the Chinese.
At Forbes, Gordon Chang discusses the history of the Uighurs. These two paragraphs were especially enlightening..( via Instapundit) :
The Uighurs are a conquered people. In the 1940s, they had their own state, the East Turkestan Republic, for about half a decade. Mao Zedong, however, forcibly incorporated the short-lived nation into the People’s Republic by sending the People’s Liberation Army into Xinjiang.
As much as the Uighurs deserve to govern themselves again–and they most certainly do–almost no one thinks they will be able to resurrect the East Turkestan state. They have even lost their own homeland, as Beijing’s policies encouraged the Han to populate Xinjiang. In the 1940s, Hans constituted about 5% of Xinjiang’s population. Today, that number has increased to about 40%. In the capital of Urumqi, more than 70% of the residents are Hans. In short, the Uighurs are no match for the seemingly invincible Han-dominated state.
For all the talk about how Israel violates the Fourth Geneva Convention with its “settlements, it’s remarkable that the Chinese clearly violated elements of the convention but it doesn’t even warrant a second thought in diplomatic circles. In order to say that Israel violates the convention one must ignore that the territory they captured in 1967 was already illegally occupied by Jordan. It also ignores that areas like the Etzion Bloc and Hebron were emptied of their Jewish populations by force.
But clearly the Chinese invaded and occupied a formerly sovereign state. Moreover this is from Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that is often cited as a reason that Israeli “settlements” are illegal:
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
Chang tells us that in order to complete the annexation of Uighur territory, the Chinese moved the Han into Xinjiang. This is the action that was meant to be prohibited by the convention, but the Chinese – unencumbered by any opposition – moved the Han population into Xinjiang in order to squelch any aspirations to independence by the Uighurs. But for some reason, international law experts are silent about this blatant violation of the law.
This selective application of the convention is one more illustration of how international law is applied only to one country. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.