From Guns to Scalpels: Reproductive Violence and the (In)Visibility of Non-Lethal Genocidal Acts

By: Anthony Ghaly

PDF: From Guns to Scalpels

Although codified in the Genocide Convention, few instances of genocide have fallen under Article II(d) of the treaty, which ensures that “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” may constitute the actus reus of genocide. Today, the proliferation of reproductive technologies and mass surveillance has widened the scope of genocidal mechanisms available to perpetrators, as such tools make feasible the implementation and enforcement of birth prevention through a wide array of means. Given the extensive documentation of compulsory birth-prevention methods imposed on Uyghur women since at least 2017, the Uyghur genocide presents a modern case of reproductive violence committed by a technologically sophisticated state and is therefore illustrative of an evolving and necessarily “non-lethal” practice of genocide. Drawing on expert interviews and an examination of victim testimonies from the Uyghur Tribunal, this Article investigates the reproductive violence underway in Xinjiang and posits a framework of genocide in which non-lethal genocidal violence manifests differently along a spectrum of force, ranging from forceful, to individually coercive, and finally to contextually coercive/propagative.

This Article accordingly adopts and builds on Randle DeFalco’s concept of the “atrocity aesthetic” to argue that the invisibilization of international crimes can and does occur through traditionally spectacular and recognizable means, such as forced abortions and sterilizations. In other words, perpetrators who seek to obfuscate their genocidal policies might do so by carrying them out in particularly unspectacular ways, for which the use of reproductive violence proves an especially adaptable, and thereby insidious, mode of harm causation. Finally, this Article also surfaces the normative concern that, as perpetrators gain the necessary reproductive infrastructure to carry out genocide in this way, future genocides may disproportionately affect the women of victimized groups to a greater degree than has been previously considered by those who study the gendered dynamics of atrocity crimes.